


Lunar Eclipse

by Retro_Controller



Series: The Lunar Eclipse Trilogy [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Blood Loss, Character Death, Gen, Hospitals, I might add more tags as I think of them, I promise I love all my volleyball babies please don't hate me, Injury, Mentions of Suicide, Pain, Profanity, Smoking, Suffering, The rest of the Karasuno team also appears at one point, Violence, lots of emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-22 20:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 83,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15590229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Retro_Controller/pseuds/Retro_Controller
Summary: "Sugawara," Ukai tried again, "What's going on?"The younger man paused. It was clear to Ukai that this conversation was taking a lot out of him. When Sugawara spoke again, he was close to tears."Tsukishima's been shot."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all!
> 
> I originally only had this fic posted on Fanfiction.net, but after a few conversations with various friends of mine it was suggested to me that I post it on this site as well, since there are a number of people who prefer AO3 and don't use Fanfiction.net. There are a number of things about my original version that I don't like, though, so I'm going to do a bit of editing as I go instead of putting it all up at one time. 
> 
> That being said, if you have any constructive criticism for me, leave a comment. I'm always looking to get better, so I'd love to hear it. 
> 
> Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. Enjoy the story :)

Silence. A soft, warm comfort. Darkness. 

Ringing, piercing the dark calm. 

Ukai sat up in his bed and plucked the noisy cell phone from his bedside table. He couldn’t even say hello before the voice on the other end of the line interrupted his thoughts. 

“Coach, you need to call the team together for a meeting.” 

Ukai immediately knew this was going to be a long conversation. He flipped on the lamp sitting on the table, illuminating the room, shattering his once dark and comfortable state of mind. The light nearly blinded him for a second, and he closed his eyes, blinking several times until he adjusted, though it was a futile effort. His eyes stung, and he still squinted. 

“It’s 2am. Why would I do that?” The person on the other end of the line hesitated. He knew that voice, but he was just too tired to put it to a face or a name. However… something about the voice worried him. There was hidden emotion there, veiled by a silky gossamer that its owner was failing to extinguish completely. Shock? Or was it something worse? 

“There’s been an emergency. And the team needs to know about it right away.” The coach’s eyes widened considerably at the word ‘emergency.’ The name of the voice’s owner clicked into place. 

“Wait, what happened? What’s wrong? Sugawara?” 

The voice on the other end of the phone trembled, dripping with a muddled pain, one that seemed to just now be breaking the shock that had concealed it so thinly. Ukai knew then: This was bad. Something was very wrong. 

“Sugawara,” he tried again, “What’s going on?” 

The younger man paused again. It was clear to Ukai that this conversation was taking a lot out of him. When Sugawara spoke again, he was close to tears. 

“Tsukishima’s been shot.” 

* * *

“Fuck.”

What else was he supposed to say at a time like this? Was there a more appropriate reaction to hearing that one of your student athletes had been viciously gunned down? 

Shit. Sugawara was a mess now. In the few seconds it had taken Ukai to process what he’d heard, the poor kid had fallen apart. The veil having been completely torn away, the young man was crying terribly. He could hear his voice on the other end of the phone: trembling, filled with hiccups and sniffles. Ukai threw the blanket off his body and swung his legs, leaving his feet hanging off the side of the bed. He stood and felt his stomach hit the floor. 

“Okay, pull yourself together,” he said forcing the knee-jerk nausea response back down his throat, “Where are you?” 

“Miyagi General. He just went into surgery a little while ago.” Ukai tried his best soothing dad voice. 

“Sugawara, sit tight. I’m on my way. We’re gonna talk about this, we’re gonna talk to Tsukishima’s family - Have you called Tsukishima’s family?” 

“No, sir.” 

“We’re gonna talk to Tsukishima’s family, and once everything’s settled, we’re gonna have an emergency meeting with the team. Sound good?” 

“Yeah.” Sugawara’s voice was getting quieter with each answer. Ukai tried not to think about such a good-natured kid going into shock. 

“Sugawara, I’ll be fifteen minutes tops,” he said, and hung up. 

Ukai tossed the phone back onto his bedside table and sat back down on the edge of his bed. Soon only the echoes of his heavy breathing and the sound of his pounding heart broke the silence of the empty apartment. He put his face in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair. This kid could be dead before the sun comes up. He’s what, sixteen? Shit. He’d never met the family, but he knew his grandfather had coached the elder Tsukishima a handful of years ago. If that kid died, it wouldn’t just break the team’s morale. Everyone’s lives would change. Nothing could ever be the same - and that wasn’t even considering his family… 

Ukai stood, interrupting his own thoughts. Death was the last thing he wanted to think about. He ruffled through his drawers, trying to find at least one pair of clean pants. After he succeeded, he dressed himself, throwing on throwing on a wadded t-shirt he’d found in the corner of his bedroom. He grabbed his phone from the bedside table, checked its charge, and stuffed it into his back pocket. Making his way into the kitchen, he put on the first shoes his hands found and snatched his keys from the kitchen table. He glanced around the apartment and opened the door to the hallway. He paused. Closing the door again, he found a jacket hanging on one of the kitchen chairs. From its pocket he fished his lighter and cigarettes. He had a feeling it would be several hours before he could come back to grab them, and something told him he would definitely need a smoke before this whole ordeal was over. With that, Ukai left his apartment, closing the door behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all! 
> 
> I'm sorry the last chapter was so short. This one is longer, I promise. 
> 
> I don't know how much of this I'm going to post at one time, since I have it all written already and I'm just editing as I go, but we'll see. 
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy chapter 2!

Very little could convince Sugawara that he wasn’t tangled in a hellish nightmare right now, except for the obvious fact that he wasn’t. What was he doing in a hospital? How could the chain of events of his life have led him to this moment, in a hospital cafeteria, hoping a friend, a friend who has lived a shorter lifetime than he has, didn’t lose that life sometime in the next few hours? It was humbling and it was terrifying, thinking about the fact that he might actually outlive someone close to him while he was still in high school. His mind travelled back to the first time he saw the first years enter the gym. It was his gym, his home, and he was about to share it with these new players. It was his job - his, Daichi’s, and Asahi’s - to help these new players grow, and nobody could forget the potential they all saw in Tsukishima. While everyone obsessed over Kageyama and Hinata’s quick, they knew the two blockheads weren’t the only talented players on the court. Tsukishima was tall, taller than even Asahi. He had a great build for blocking and the intelligence to back it up, if only he _cared_. Now he had finally begun to tap that potential… and tragedy came crashing down around him. 

“It’s not fair.” Sugawara whispered to himself. The sound of his own voice was harsh and unnatural. It sounded alien, and it made him uncomfortable. 

Who would they use to replace his middle blocker position if Tsukishima died? Would the team ever be the same? Could any of them ever love volleyball again? Especially… Especially Yamaguchi. Oh, god… Yamaguchi. He had been so wrapped up in his own problems, he had forgotten about Yamaguchi. The poor kid had no idea what had happened, and there was no way he could handle it in his present situation. His best friend might not live to see daybreak, and he was at home with his family, completely oblivious to the hell that Tsukishima was wrestling with at this very moment. Sugawara wished he could stop thinking about death. 

He tried to think about his coffee instead. It wasn’t the greatest coffee he’d ever had, but he was sitting in a hospital cafeteria at two in the morning. This coffee was the best he was going to get. He swirled the caramel-colored liquid around in the flimsy cardboard cup. He watched the milky white spread through the darker brown, making tiny patterns as if on a canvas. He tried to let the scent carry him away. 

It wasn’t bad coffee, really. He’d had worse. Besides, he needed the caffeine. If he was being honest with himself, though, he didn’t think he could sleep right now anyway, even without caffeine. There was something about seeing a close friend nearly die right in front of you that really interrupted the sleep schedule. He chastised himself for being so morbid. 

He remembered being groggy waking up that morning. This morning. It was only eighteen hours ago, but it felt like weeks. He took a sip of his coffee and checked his phone. The coffee was slightly, almost imperceptibly bitter, and even though it wasn’t great coffee, it had been made exactly the way he liked it. Almost obsessively, he checked his phone again. No new messages from coach. It had been over ten minutes. Trying to distract himself, he looked around the cafeteria. It was white. It was so white, it looked almost mint green, like the white was so bright that it looked neon. It was disgusting, and it made him feel like throwing up. He closed his eyes and tried to force back the grisly images of mere hours ago that flooded his mind. Images, snapshots captured in vivid color, bombarded him just behind his eyes. The deep red blood that stained his teammate’s shirt and jeans, the same blood that stained Sugawara’s hands. For a moment, he could almost see it covering his hands, springing from a sort of sprinkler underneath his skin like a warped fountain of youth, distorted by nightmares. He opened his eyes. 

There was no blood. There was a spot of coffee, though, right there on his thumb where the cup had spilled over, just a little. He considered wiping it off, but didn’t care enough to do so. Looking around some more, he could see the handful of other people milling silently around the cafeteria. Most of them seemed to be just as he was, exhausted past words, nursing mediocre cups of 2am hospital coffee just as he was. He wondered if any of them were in a better position than he was. He turned back around to see a sweet-faced middle aged woman standing in front of him, across the two-person table. 

“Hello, young man. I noticed you were here alone. Kids your age don’t usually hang out at hospitals alone in the middle of the night, so I thought you could use someone to talk to.” 

Sugawara smiled at her, though it felt like a grimace. She seemed kind, approaching him of her own volition. He wondered what was going on in her own life to cause her to want to reach out to him at his lowest point, when she was clearly here to support someone as well. He began to feel like he didn’t deserve her kindness, but quickly reprimanded himself. None of this was his fault, he had to remember. 

“Yes, thank-you, ma’am.” She sat down in the chair across from him. 

“So,” she began, “what do you need to get off your chest? Why are you here?” 

Sugawara paused before he answered. Was he really about to spill his guts to a total stranger, a stranger who might even judge him for screwing up so badly? Maybe this woman showing up was some kind of divine providence. But then again…

“I… I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can say just yet. Thinking about it is one thing, but giving it a voice makes it real. I don’t think I can handle that again. My… my teammate… my friend… he was seriously hurt. He might die… I’m sorry, I can’t say anything else.” 

Sugawara could feel himself shaking as he spoke. It was involuntary, and it was violent. He felt a harsh chill pass through his body and clutched his coffee cup tighter, draining the last vestiges of heat from the lukewarm cup. He clung desperately to the flimsy cardboard, even though he knew his skin was hot to the touch. He suddenly felt the woman’s soft hands clasp his own in a gesture of comfort. 

“I’m so sorry. Your friend is in my prayers.” Sugawara thanked her gently. A moment passed. 

“So if you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “Why are you here?” The woman took a moment to look down, and Sugawara saw that she was gathering herself, preparing her answer. 

“My daughter is in surgery, too. She’s had a heart defect since she was born, so we’re here a lot.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Thank-you, but I’m used to hospitals by now. My daughter is a strong woman. I have faith she’ll be fine. But whenever she has a procedure done, I like to look around the cafeteria at those who are going through rough times. You see, when I was a young mother, the first time my daughter had surgery, I was an absolute wreck until a kind soul found me a comforted me. Since then, I’ve made it a point to find the one person in the cafeteria who I could see needed me help the most.” 

Sugawara felt an overwhelming surge of guilt pass over him before he quickly swallowed it. 

“That was me? Why?” 

“Because you’ve consistently looked like you were both on the brink of tears and about to collapse since you walked in here, that and I’m surprised you haven’t put a hole in that coffee cup yet, judging by how hard you’ve been squeezing it.” Instinctively, Sugawara relaxed his grip. 

“You know what I think?” The woman continued. Sugawara looked her in the eye. 

“What?” 

“I think you’re a very strong young man. And I think that whatever happened to your friend, whatever situation led you to where you are right now, you handled it with maturity and grace. And I don’t think you need to berate yourself for that.” Sugawara sat dumbfounded for several seconds. 

“I - how… thank-you, ma’am.” 

It was then that the cafeteria door creaked open and Sugawara looked up to see Ukai, exhausted and disheveled, standing there on the threshold.


	3. Chapter 3

Sugawara turned to the man he had been awaiting for the last twenty minutes and immediately collapsed into a sense of relief that morphed into an almost eerie exaltation. Finally, the supervisor, the adult, had arrived. The relief was almost enough for the concrete sitting in the center of his chest to crumble. He felt his hands shake once again and recognized it as the unique sensation of his blood running cold. His tortured mind assaulted him with an image of Tsukishima, stained deep red, lying in a heap on a white tile floor. His blood was still. His blood was cold. Tears began to form at the corners of Sugawara’s eyes a fraction of a second before he blinked them away, locking up the gruesome image of his teammate with them. 

He turned back toward the woman he had been sitting with, this kind stranger who had opened her heart to him, and he smiled faintly. 

“Thank-you, ma’am, for what you’ve done for me.” 

“I’m glad to have done it. Everyone needs a shoulder to cry on from time to time.” Sugawara bowed meekly as he stood and walked to Ukai, pausing to finish his lukewarm coffee and dump the cup in the garbage bin on his way through the cafeteria door. 

“Who was that?” Ukai asked as the door creaked closed behind them. 

“Someone very kind.” Sugawara murmured sadly as he kept moving. Ukai could almost swear to a hint of guilt in the young man’s face as he passed by the coach. Ukai quickly followed him. 

* * *

They had spent the last several minutes traversing hallways and riding elevators in heavy silence. Sugawara wore a look of unbridled anguish through the whole trek. It was unbearable for Ukai, watching one of his players torture himself like the third year so clearly was. But the coach knew his pain. He could read it on the young man’s face. 

“Sugawara,” he said, his voice gentle, but with a strength underneath, “You need to talk about this.” The young setter avoided his gaze, refusing to speak. Ukai sighed, and muttered under his breath. 

“I hear you, kid. I hear you.” 

* * *

Minutes later the pair made their way to Ukai’s car, parked haphazardly in the third level parking garage. The wheels sat crooked in the space, as half the car rested across the neatly painted line. Sugawara could feel the breeze from the nearly empty lot force its way through his hair, violating his carefully formed veneer of emotional control. As his brain processed the quick beeping of Ukai unlocking the car, Sugawara felt the wind cut him down to his core. He heard the soft click of the door unlocking, opened it, and pulled himself into the passenger’s seat. 

“Where are we going?” he asked his coach, though he knew the answer. 

“We’re going to talk to Tsukishima’s parents. I understand this is going to be the most difficult thing you’ve probably ever done, but his family needs to know, and you saw the incident.” Sugawara buckled his seatbelt and turned to look out the window. 

“I’ll be there the whole time. I can break the news, but you have to tell the story.” 

Silence. 

“They’re his family. They deserve to know what happened to their son.” 

More silence. Until finally…

“They know.” 

“They know?” 

“I talked to the police. The police probably talked to the family. They know.” Ukai paused slightly. 

“Well, I’m still taking you to see them. You need to talk about it.” Sugawara went silent once more. 

Ukai had never seen the poor kid in this kind of pain. He wasn’t just quiet, he was lost. He could see it in the kid’s eyes, Sugawara as staring out into the street, his eyes reflected in the car window. They were wide. And miles away. 

* * *

A minute or two later they were on the road. It had started raining, and Sugawara leaned his head against the window, letting the chill of the glass cool the heat of his face. He wished his body would stop tormenting him. His skin was hot to the touch, but his blood was frozen. His mind drifted back to those old Greek stories he’d learned in his Western Mythology class, the ones about gods and heroes. He remembered that there was once a man named Atlas, whose job it was to hold the sky above the earth, literally carrying the weight of the world. Before he could stop himself, Sugawara felt white hot tears burning the sides of his cheeks. This wasn’t a weight he’d wanted, a guilt he’d never asked ot bear. Eighteen was too young to be carrying the weight of human life. 

Ukai saw the tears. Just as the car came to a stop light, the coach took the opportunity to sneak a quick, sideways glance at the boy to make sure he was alright, and saw the salt-tinged drops trickle down Sugawara’s face. He knew he needed to do something to help, but he didn’t know what. He wasn’t a parent, and had no intention of ever being one. He had no idea how to comfort someone so much younger than he was, how to be the mature adult. Sure babies were easy enough, but teenagers? Who the hell knew how to have a meaningful conversation with a teenager? 

Suddenly, Ukai heard a soft sound, a barely audible sniffle, from his passenger. He sighed and pulled off to the side of the road, flipped on his emergency flashers, and unlocked his seatbelt so he could move around more freely. However you were supposed to comfort a teenager, he was about to figure it out. Maybe Sugawara needed a more direct approach to snap him out of his funk. He shifted himself to face his player. 

“Okay, Sugawara, right now you’re trying to handle this alone, and I get it. You’re a third year, the senpai. You teach them. You’re the vice captain and you feel like you need to lead them, especially Hinata, Kageyama, Yamaguchi, and… Tsukishima because they’re first years, right?” Sugawara said nothing and continued to cry, silent tears rolling harder and faster down his face. 

“You’re the comfort to Daichi’s authority, is that it? So you need to be just as strong as he is. Well, take this from me, Sugawara, this… this silent treatment you’re giving me? This isn’t being strong. Being strong isn’t hiding your emotion, it’s dealing with it. The problem won’t go away if you ignore it, and you need to stop, or it’s gonna tear you to pieces, I guarantee it. So look me in the eye like a man, and tell me what happened.” 

Outside the window the rain beat harder on the little car, and Sugawara listened carefully to its rhythmic tap on the vehicle’s exterior. He thought that maybe, somehow, some way, the heartbeat of the rain would calm the heart beating inside his chest. He wondered what the car’s exterior felt like, being constantly and consistently assaulted by falling water, by this force over which it had no control. 

“I’m sorry, but could I step outside for a minute?” Sugawara asked without looking in Ukai’s direction, “I can’t breathe very well. I think I need some fresh air.” Ukai nodded, surprised the boy didn’t fall apart right there, turned off the engine, and unlocked the car. Almost immediately, Sugawara released his seatbelt and pushed open the door. 

Once outside, Sugawara could feel the heat of the pavement, released by the rain, assault his legs. It was like the whole world was too hot, and the rain was the sky’s last chance to cool it, to save it, before the heat blew everything on the surface of the earth to tiny pieces. He felt the earth’s heat invade his body, take it over, but he was still shivering. He stood, arms and legs outstretched, and tossed his head back to face the sky and everything in it. He opened his mouth and tried to scream, but his chest was tight, like his heart was being squeezed by an invisible snake, slithering around his organs, draining his vitality like a vapor from a shattered pot. He felt like his throat had twisted itself closed. 

Sugawara screwed his eyes shut and let the rain pour over his shivering form. The drops of water felt like ice on his burning skin, and if he listened hard enough, he could trick himself into hearing a soft sizzling sound with the contact of each drop. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was soaked to the skin, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. As the rain beat faster onto the pavement, Sugawara suddenly felt every ounce of energy he had drain into a puddle with the rain. His knees buckled, and Sugawara fell to the ground, unleashing a mighty outcry that pierced the drum of rainfall. 

* * *

Ukai knew that Sugawara need this… whatever it was - the rain, the chill, the open air. There was something devastating inside of him, and whatever happened from here on out, he knew the young man would be better for taking this moment, somehow with his own two hands, to put the pieces together and set it right inside himself. He wasn’t prepared for Sugawara to produce the most agonizing cry of emotion he’d ever heard pass over a person’s lips. Quick as a whip, Ukai flung open the driver’s side door and ran around to the other side of the car. In three seconds flat he came upon Sugawara’s shuddering form lying on the pavement. 

“Sugawara!” he shouted, “Sugawara, are you okay?” 

But instead of receiving anything close to an intelligible answer, the coach’s ears were greeted with another sound - smaller, almost a whimper. 

He took a few steps closer to Sugawara and sat back on his haunches, his mind reeling. What could he do to comfort the poor kid? It wasn’t like he’d ever been through anything this soul-crushing. He watched the tears stream down the young man’s face, mixing with the rain on the pavement. He could see the flecks of black asphalt dotting his cheeks, watched them stick resolutely in place despite his river of tears. He watched Sugawara pull his knees up to his chest and hold them close, a useless life saver in an ocean of pain. He was soaking wet and still shivering. 

“Sugawara, you’re going to catch a cold. We don’t need you in the hospital, too.” He reached out to comfort the setter when everything released. 

Sugawara let go of everything, all the pain he had built up, the concrete crushing his chest, the serpent squeezing his heart. He rolled onto his knees and sobbed horribly into the ground, pounding his fists into the pavement until his knuckles cracked and bled. Ukai rushed forward to stop him from hurting himself any further, but was quickly stopped by Sugawara's yelling.

"Coach, you don't understand! It's my fault! Everything is my fault!"

"How is it your fault?"

"Because I didn't stop it! Because it was my stupid idea that put him in danger in the first place! Because if I hadn't been such an idiot, Tsukishima wouldn't be fighting for his life! How can I ever face the team again? How can I face Yamaguchi, knowing I killed his best friend? How can I face his family? Akiteru, his brother? How the hell can I hold my head high ever again with the weight of his death on my shoulders? It's all my fault!" The young man screeched and pounded his fists into the ground once more, prompting another, more physically painful yell as blood flowed freely from his hands.

Ukai got on his knees and took Sugawara roughly by the shoulder pulling him up so he was kneeling in front of him. He gave the young man a hard look.

"Listen to me. I don't know what happened. I don't know how Tsukishima got hurt, or where, or why. But I do know that whatever the fuck it was, it was not your goddamn fault. Did you point the gun at him? Did you pull the trigger?" When Sugawara was silent he pressed on.

"I want you to answer me!"

"No." he whispered.

"No you didn't. He isn't dead, and you didn't kill him. You did what you could, and life happened anyway. Whatever went down, you could never have known it was going to happen. This. Is not. Your. Fault. And you need to stop telling yourself that it is."

At that Sugawara collapsed again into the ground, hunched over himself, tears freely flowing.

Ukai reached out, putting what he hoped was a comforting hand on the setter's shoulder. Much to his surprise, Sugawara reached out to him. Taking a hand from the pavement he raised it to his shoulder and held his coach's hand in place. Ukai could feel the young man's firm grip, strengthened by emotion and years of playing volleyball. He watched the blood from his split knuckles mix with the rain and slide off his skin. It was like he could feel Sugawara's pain, every muscle in his shoulder was tightly wired.

"Please. Stay like this for a while," he begged, "I'm not okay. I.. I need this right now." Not quite understanding, but agreeing anyway, Ukai nodded.

"Sure." After several seconds that seemed to drag on like hours, Ukai spoke again.

"You know, I wasn't kidding when I said you were gonna catch a cold. Now that the rain's stopped, let me get a few blankets from my trunk, and you can warm up a bit." Sugawara silently released Ukai's hand. The coach stood, and walked around to the back of the car, unlocking it and lifting the hatch. He returned a few seconds later with several folded yellow blankets. With the blankets tucked under one arm, he offered one to Sugawara.

"Here, let me help you up." Sugawara took his hand and stood, shaking.

Several minutes later they were back in the car. Ukai had turned on the car's heating despite the spring warmth to dry off his young passenger. Sugawara was wrapped in blankets, his silver hair plastered to his face, his knuckles bound with some napkins and old pre-wrap. They were off to see Tsukishima's family, where Sugawara would finally confront his demons.


	4. Chapter 4

_"It's fine. Suga is walking with me. No, I don't know anything about Yamaguchi's father. Yes, we'll be home within the next twenty minutes."_

__

…

__

_Sirens. Voices, yelling. A blinding, neon white light distorts the scene. Faint images can be picked out from the glare - large furniture structures, large doors - and several blurred people, some walking, some running, some standing, but one kneeling... and one lying still._

__

_The hyper-illuminated scene is suddenly tinged with red as the point of view shifts down toward the floor, now from the eyes of the kneeling figure. The figure lying on the floor has stopped moving, a small red shape adorning its body and quickly growing larger. Other, larger figures suddenly crowd the kneeling figure and the one who is still._

__

_"Sir, I need you to move. We need to do our jobs."_

__

_"Excuse me young man..."_

__

_"Get that kid out of here, now!"_

__

_"Someone get me a read on this kid's vitals!"_

__

_"Did anyone catch a good look at that guy?"_

__

_"Hey, is he okay?"_

__

_"Move!"_

__

_"Move!"_

__

_"Move!"_

__

_Sugawara!_

* * *

"Sugawara." The voice was Ukai's. The aforementioned setter snapped his head to face Ukai and gave the coach a hard stare.

"Sugawara, talk to me."

They were still in Ukai's car, parked in what he assumed to be Tsukishima's driveway. It was still nighttime. The rain had stopped. The world was still exactly the way it had been minutes ago.

Ukai took Sugawara's silence as a hint to get him moving. It was clear from his passenger's solid, far away stare that his mind was miles away from the present moment. _He's probably thinking about the incident. Shit._ He needed to get him saying things. Out loud. It was the only way...Of course, Ukai was not a psychologist, and had never been through anything this traumatic himself, so for all he knew, he could be making it worse by forcing him talk to the victim's parents immediately following the incident.

_Incident_. He kept calling it that. He kept mentally calling Tsukishima the victim. Why couldn't he get it through his thick head that Tsukishima wasn't a statistic? That he was a breathing human being, one with a soul, with dreams and a beating heart? He'd coached the kid for god's sake. Maybe Sugawara's mindset was contagious... No. That couldn't be it. Sugawara seemed to be too familiar with what was happening - trapped in it. Ukai was using what he'd remembered an old teacher call distancing language, not referring to the person in question by name, making them a number instead of a living being. The coach and his player were on opposite sides of the spectrum. While Sugawara was drowning in his pain, Ukai was running screaming from the shore.

"We need to go inside, Sugawara."

"No. Not with them there."

For the first time, Ukai noticed the cop car sitting in the driveway, only a few feet away from his own vehicle. Sugawara had probably just gotten done talking to them when he'd called...it made sense if they'd come straight here to tell the parents.

"Well, why not? You've talked to them already, right? And the incident wasn't your fault."

"Because...because I think I'm vulnerable...in a way." It was a hard thing for Sugawara to really place his finger on. He felt like he was five years old again, holding his mother's hand in the grocery store, hiding from the scary-looking strangers around him.

"Sugawara," Ukai began. He unbuckled his seat belt and placed his hands firmly on the young man's shoulders, the now slightly damp blanket hanging off them like a towel soaking up the sweat of a mid-summer practice.

"They're in there going through the same thing you are. They're scared, and they're confused, and they need the compassion just like you do. Please. Be the bigger man, and don't give in to this...whatever the hell it is that you're so absorbed in, okay? You are not the only one who feels like they're drowning. I'd bet the store on the fact that Tsukishima's family has it pretty rough in there right now."

For the first time all night, Sugawara seemed to be pondering what Ukai was saying, without letting it simply slide over him like the rain dripping from his brow.

"Okay."

* * *

Warm quiet light adds a late-night glow to the half-asleep living room. It contains two people. One, a soft-haired, and soft-hearted young man, sitting on a couch, leaning forward, his hands folded on his knees, as he stares past the walls of the room that has become his prison. Two, an older woman with the same soft hair, pacing back and forth, trapped in the rut in which her situation has put her. She speaks, and the young man finally turns to her.

"Kei hasn't come home, yet."

"I know, mom." he replies, his voice tinged by a somewhat uncharacteristic forlorn quality.

Akiteru Tsukishima is trapped in his living room. He has been sitting with his mother for the last twenty minutes, frozen to this spot on the couch, awaiting any information that would ease their pain. He had come home from his job earlier to find that his little brother's volleyball team was having a late night practice to prepare for nationals. This was normal. However, it was now well past 12:30 in the morning and said little brother wasn't home yet. This was not.

"Did he say anything about staying with Tadashi?" the woman asked. The young man sighed. He was tired. He'd worked an eight-hour shift after waking up at 6am, and had a volleyball game with the Neighborhood Association after that. Not to mention he hadn't eaten anything since his lunch break hours ago. His exhaustion was exacerbating his fear and the creeping sensation growing in the back of his mind, telling him that there was a very real chance that something serious could have happened to Kei. He needed to be strong. Solid. As the current man of the house, he needed to be a man, even if it was just so his mother wouldn't fall apart.

"He hasn't told me anything," he replied, forcing as much fear out of his voice as he could.

Amaya Tsukishima was a total mess. When her husband had first told her that his new job meant he'd be working internationally for most of the year, her first reaction was fear. How would she raise two boys essentially on her own? She never knew how to be stern, and she certainly didn't know how to get in the middle of Kei and Akiteru's fights, especially after what happened between them when Akiteru was in high school. Her husband had always been good at that, though she supposed it may have bred unresolved anger toward him. Kei and Akiteru never did seem to be too fond of their father, which she supposed was understandable, though it turned something inside her, in the back of her mind, or perhaps in the bottom of her stomach. Her husband was almost never around, and when he was, he was yelling at them. But he loved them just as much as he loved her. She was sure of it. They just never really experienced the softer, more passionate side of the stern, formal businessman that she had.

She wished he was here to handle this now. She didn't know what to do. Kei had told her almost an hour ago that he'd be home in about twenty minutes. What if something happened? If something was wrong? Her husband was stronger. He'd know what to do. She paced around her living room some more.

Akiteru looked at his watch. It had been just over forty-five minutes since Kei said he'd be home in twenty. He tried not to let the fear overcome his logic. There are plenty of reasons why a person would arrive much later than expected. For example, maybe he and Sugawara had to stop somewhere else. Or maybe they dropped Sugawara off first. There was no need for him to lose his head about it. Still... there was an unshakable feeling nagging at the back of his mind...

"Maybe he and Sugawara stopped somewhere else?" There was a pause, where Amaya had turned her face away from Akiteru.

"I'm calling him again."

She picked up her cell phone from the coffee table and dialed her son's cell number. It rang for what seemed like several minutes, and then went to voicemail.

"It's ringing, so the battery isn't dead. But he's not picking up. What if something's wrong?"

"Or he could have lost it somewhere. Or he just doesn't want to talk to you. You know how he can be. He's the spitting image of dad."

Amaya gave him a mixed stare.

"Your father's really not that bad," she said, "He just can't express himself very well." Akiteru said nothing.

"Akiteru, honey, please don't do this now," she continued, "Your father loves you boys more than life itself."

Akiteru didn't reply. He didn't want to admit that sometimes, when he was alone in his room with the oppressive darkness of the night encompassing him, he still felt that his brother's attitude was entirely his fault.

Amaya called Kei again after a several more minutes, with the same result. When she pulled the phone away from her face, Akiteru could see the split second of pain, before fear overcame her features once again. She stayed that way for several seconds without speaking. Finally...

"I'm calling the police."

"Mom - "

"Akiteru, this is serious. You're brother's practice ended almost two hours ago, and we haven't heard from him for at least one. No, Kei doesn't tell me everything, but he's never just not come home. I'm calling the police. If I'm worrying for nothing, then there's no downside to being sure."

"...Okay."

Amaya Tsukishima pressed a few buttons on her phone and put it up to her face once again.

* * *

Sugawara and Ukai stood at the Tsukishimas' doorstep. Without thinking, Sugawara focused his hearing, trying to see if he could hear crying coming from inside the house. He stopped when he realized what he was doing, mentally chastising himself in the process. This was their time to come to terms with the situation. It wasn't his place to barge in, even if he was curious as to the effects of his negligence.

"Are you ready?" Ukai asked him gently.

Sugawara simply nodded, trying his best to hide as much nervous energy as he could from his face.

Ukai knocked on the door.

* * *

There was a knock at the door.

"Who would be at the door at this hour? The police? Maybe they're finally getting back to us." Akiteru asked, staring down at his watch. It was almost 2am. It had been over an hour since his mother had reported Kei as missing. They told her they'd keep an eye out, search the area for suspicious activity, but not much else. Was Kei just now coming home, fully prepared for an earful from his mother about the dangers of staying out late? Or was it someone else, dreading to deliver some unbearable news?

"Maybe it's Kei." his mother announced, allowing the barest hint of hope leak into her voice. She went to the kitchen and opened the door.

She did not find her youngest son standing in the doorway, but rather a local police officer, wearing an expression she tried to think of as anything but what it was - solemn, and filled to the brim with pity. She let the words escape her before she knew what they were.

"Oh, god."

"Excuse me ma'am, are you Mrs. Amaya Tsukishima?" He asked. She swallowed hard and replied, the weakness of her voice bleeding into her words.

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"Mrs. Tsukishima, My name is Officer Hashimoto. I have some news regarding your son, Kei. May I come in?" She slowly and silently nodded, stepping aside and allowing him, and the news he carried, passage into her home. It was at that moment Akiteru entered the kitchen.

"Hello, sir." The group moved to the living room. The officer followed the Tsukishimas, taking his seat in an armchair across from Akiteru and Amaya, who took their seats on the couch.

"Ma'am, you called us an hour ago to report your son Kei missing because he hadn't come home. Is that correct?" Amaya nodded her head.

"I spent most of my last two hours at a crime scene, ma'am, I want you to understand that. A man attempted to rob a convenience store at gunpoint a few streets from here."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Ma'am, your son was involved in the incident." Amaya could feel her blood pressure skyrocket at the officer's words. Something was wrong. Alarm bells went off in her mind, their mental noise clouding her senses, ringing in her ears.

"My son...was...?"

"The suspect fired only one shot before we were called to the scene and put an end to the situation. However, that one shot did make contact." Hashimoto paused, gathering himself.  
Amaya knew what was coming. Her brain ran, reeling, taking her as far from her living room as it could possibly manage. Her conscious mind fought back, fighting desperately to stay connected, to hear what she needed to hear. The words needed to be quick. They needed to be solid. The situation needed to be real for her to face it.

"Mrs. Tsukishima, the suspect shot Kei before fleeing the scene."

That was all she needed to hear before she emotionally collapsed. She was assaulted by images from Kei's childhood. She went back to that day, sixteen years ago, when she held her baby boy in her arms for the first time, blond hair in a swirled mess on his head, and stormy grey-blue eyes, soon to morph into the honey-brown she would recognize from across a room. She felt him squirm in her embrace, his tiny lungs producing soft cries as his eyes darted around the room, eager to take in their surroundings.

_"Honey, he looks like you," she whispered, joy enveloping her heart._

_"Yes he does. But he has your spirit." Amaya paused, unable to take her eyes off her beautiful son._

_"Let's name him Kei." Her husband looked at her with confusion._

_"Why Kei?"_

_"Because even though he may be of the moon, he is not without his own light."_

As it turned out, Kei had grown up a lot like both of them. Most days, he had his father's strength, firm and unmoving, concealed under a calm exterior that protected his vulnerable emotions. However, every now and again when he was comfortable, such as when he discussed volleyball with Akiteru, his eyes brightened, his walls lowered, and his mother's softness shone through. Amaya forced herself back into reality.

When she returned to the present, she realized she was crying. She hadn't felt the salt-soaked liquid begin to caress her skin, but it was there nonetheless. Her chest was tight, and she felt like she couldn't breathe, that it didn't matter how much air she took in, that there would never be enough oxygen. She couldn't lose him now. He had so much life left to live.

"Officer, please..." the distraught mother choked, hoping beyond reason for something to cling to, "Tell me... Is Kei dead? Please... is my little boy dead?" _How much hope am I allowed to have?_

"No," Hashimoto said, "Kei survived the injury. He was brought to Miyagi General Hospital by ambulance a little over an hour ago. He's in surgery now, but I'm going to be frank with you, Mrs. Tsukishima. He isn't out of the woods. It is still very possible your son could die during surgery." Amaya took in a deep breath, letting it wash over her whole being before speaking again.

"Okay. Thank-you for your honesty." A new voice interrupted the conversation.

"If you'll excuse me, mom, officer. I need a minute."

Amaya hadn't realized Akiteru had been so silent. The young man stood from his place on the couch, and left in the direction of his bedroom.

There was a knock at the door.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all! 
> 
> A new day, a new chapter. Or several chapters. I'm not sure how many. 
> 
> Anyway, thank-you to everyone who's enjoying this story so far, and please enjoy chapter five :)

Amaya opened the kitchen door to find Sugawara and Ukai standing at the threshold. She noticed that Sugawara looked like a drowned rat, and there was blood seeping from what appeared to be napkins of some sort wrapped around his hands. Ukai, she noticed, wore the face of a man who had not had nearly enough sleep, alcohol, tobacco, or any combination of the three.

"Sugawara, honey, what happened?" He looked at her, opened his mouth to speak, and then fell strangely silent. What would he tell her? That he lost his temper, or more accurately, his mind? That he screamed furiously into the rain and wind? That he punched a road? Was there a way to tell her what happened without sounding like he'd taken a nosedive off the deep end of the swimming pool of insanity?

Sugawara looked at this woman, wondering what he would say to her, when he suddenly realized that this was the woman who raised Tsukishima. His teammate's attitude was uncaring, often crossing the line into rude and hurtful. He didn't know why, but he'd always imagined a person like that would have parents who were just as harsh and critical. An attitude like that had to come from somewhere, right? But this woman was none of those things. He could tell from her words, the tonal quality of her voice... this woman was gentle, and she cared about Sugawara's well-being and seemed to genuinely worry about whether or not he was okay. He felt her gaze dig into him, her chocolate brown eyes push through his mental defenses. It was persistent, but it wasn't in any way negative. Questioning and comforting, it was a gaze that could never judge him - a mother's gaze.

"You don't have to tell me now. I have a first aid kit and some towels in the bathroom. Let's get you patched up and dried off." She took his wrists in a brief moment of motherly attentiveness, careful not to disturb his injured knuckles, and led the way toward the bathroom. Sugawara followed. When he'd looked into her eyes, he'd noticed how red and puffy they were, bloodshot, the surrounding skin raw, and he once again felt indescribably guilty. She'd been crying, bitterly - probably just before he and Ukai had knocked on the door. How in the world could he tell this woman that, no more than an hour and a half ago, he'd cleaned her son's blood off his hands?

It was at that point Akiteru entered the kitchen, accompanied by Officer Hashimoto. The officer gave Akiteru a quick glance of dismissal and crossed the room to Ukai on his way out through the kitchen door. He paused, leaning into Ukai's ear, and spoke softly.

"I'm going to let them have their time to compose themselves, but whenever you all are ready to go to the hospital, I'll be waiting in the car to give you an escort."

"Thank-you, sir." Officer Hashimoto nodded and left.

"Sorry about her." Ukai turned to Akiteru. He noticed the young man's face looked tired and worn, bags hung under his eyes, the eyes themselves faintly bloodshot. He was leaning on the edge of the counter next to the archway between the kitchen and the hallway, as if he simply didn't have the energy to stand upright, yet every muscle in his body was still tense, as if he was pushing through the night on willpower - or anxiety - alone.

"She's just found out about Kei, so she's trying to compensate for her fear by mothering everyone she comes in contact with."

"He needs it, though. He's been through hell." Akiteru's face took a grim turn.

"Did he see it? What happened to my brother?" Ukai paused for a moment.

"You know what? Let's go outside and talk for a bit. I need a smoke." The two men went out to the backyard.

* * *

Moonlight illuminated the Tsukishimas' backyard. An old basketball hoop stood off to one side, dirt caked in its base and small patches of rust decorating the hoop and backboard. If Ukai bothered to look closely enough, he could see tiny drops of water from the night's rainfall covering the backboard and pole. An old oak tree stood off to the other side of the yard, rain dripping from its numerous rich green leaves. The area was soaked, but it wasn't still. He'd expected the fresh clean scent of nature after the storm, but that wasn't what he'd found in the Tsukishima's yard. It was rustling, gently rustling. The air was energized ever so faintly with the delicate destruction of electricity. It was the eye of a storm.

Ukai sat on the the stoop as he took his lighter and cigarettes from his pocket. He could feel the standing water from the rain soak through his sweats, but after all the shit he'd been through tonight, he simply couldn't bring himself to care. He shook a cigarette out of the pack and put it in his mouth, letting the bulk of it hang lightly from his lips. With one quick flick of his thumb, he turned on the lighter, letting the flame dance in front of his face before putting it to the cigarette. With a sigh of relief, Ukai exhaled and freed the smoke from his lungs, stuffing the box and lighter back into his pocket.

Akiteru paced around the backyard, arms folded in front of him as Ukai smoked.

"Sit down. You're making me nervous just watching you." Akiteru crossed back to the stoop and sat down beside the coach. Ukai spent several seconds sitting in silence, letting the nicotine calm his nerves.

"So, Sugawara saw the incident? He saw my brother get shot?" Ukai responded without meeting the younger man's gaze.

"He won't tell me what he saw. Yamaguchi got some bad news from his family and had to leave practice early. Sugawara felt bad that Tsukishima was going to walk home alone and offered to walk with him instead. I left at that point because the third years had almost finished cleaning up, but a couple hours later, I got a frantic call from Sugawara telling me that your brother had been shot and was in the hospital. Sugawara was a mess, so I drove to the hospital to get him. He hasn't told me what happened in between, but he had a breakdown on the way here. I wish I knew what was going on inside his head."

Akiteru hung his head for a few seconds, letting himself soak in the weight of the situation. He stood without meeting Ukai's eye, picked up a volleyball sitting in the grass by the basketball hoop, and began to bounce the ball off the backboard. He caught it each time, feeling the weight of the ball in his hands. There was a familiar comfort in its soft, yet firm exterior, in the water from the recent rain dampening the material, in the creases that formed the sturdy seams that held everything together. It was a weight he'd felt many times, for many years. He tried to focus on volleyball, on the good memories. The sting in his hand when he hit the ball as hard as he could, the satisfying thump as it hit the floor on his opponents' side of the net. The boisterous cheers of the crowd. He tried to focus on all the things that made him happy, and none of the ones that threatened to tear down his entire world. He desperately defended the barriers of his conscious thought from the invading idea that his little brother, the one who may never forgive him, could die tonight. He wondered how his mother was holding up. He caught the ball one final time, holding it so firmly between his hands that for a split second, he had the ridiculous thought that it might pop. He snapped back into reality, letting the ball fall from his hands and roll into the wet grass.

"Listen...I have to know...and I don't know if you'd know this, but I need to ask...How gruesome was it? I mean...Did Kei know what was happening? Was he in any pain? Because I...I just need to know that my baby brother isn't suffering... that he lost consciousness before he was in any pain."

Ukai finally looked up at the younger man to see a face on the brink of emotional collapse. _He's trying so hard to be strong. I wonder where their father is?_ Akiteru was teetering on the edge of losing his mind, or at the very least his control, and Ukai knew that any minute the tears that had begun to play at the corners of his eyes would burst through the barriers of their prison. He chose his words carefully.

"I wish I could answer that. I guess it would depend on where he was shot. There are a lot of gunshot wounds that I would imagine would leave the person conscious, sometimes for… extensive periods of time. I'm sorry. But that's a question for Sugawara."

Ukai gave Akiteru a sideways look as the young man completely turned his back on the coach. Ukai removed the cigarette from his mouth, routinely tapping the end, and watched the burnt side disintegrate from the cigarette and disappear into the ground. He let it sit between his fingers, allowing the familiar sensation to block the general unease that threatened his borrowed peace. The next time Akiteru opened his mouth, his voice was thready and strained.

"No problem, that's fine. All in due time, I guess. Speaking of Sugawara, I'll go see if my mom has smothered him yet." Akiteru re-entered the house, leaving Ukai with nothing but the electricity of the air to keep him company.

* * *

Sugawara let out a pained squeal as he flinched away from Amaya's reach.

"I'm sorry, honey. This'll sting a bit." Amaya dabbed Sugawara's knuckles again with the rubbing alcohol-soaked cotton ball.

Sugawara sat on the toilet lid, a towel wrapped around his head, drying his hair, and a blanket around his shoulders. A small bathroom heater sat in the far corner of the tiny room, glowing orange and releasing so much heat that it had begun to steam the mirror above the sink to Sugawara's left. Amaya sat on the edge of the bathtub directly on Sugawara's right. Various bathroom-typical medical supplies littered the carpet at her feet, ace bandages, regular band-aids, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and tape, among other things. Amaya held Sugawara's right hand in hers, bloody knuckles exposed, barely oozing, a scab only just beginning to form over the open skin. As Sugawara hissed through his teeth, Amaya dabbed the injured hand clean, picked up the necessary supplies from the floor, and began to bandage the hand.

"I can't thank you enough, Mrs. Tsukishima." He managed once Amaya had finished pouring alcohol over the open wound and began to wrap it in gauze.

"Oh, don't worry about it, Koushi. I have two sons who've both played sports all their lives. How often do you think I've sat here and done this?"

Sugawara thought back to his own childhood, playing volleyball in his driveway with the neighborhood kids. He remembered all the times he'd scraped his knees going for a receive, all the times he sat in his bathroom with his own mother as she cleaned him up. He almost longed for that childhood, to reclaim that kind of innocence. He'd give anything to have it back after tonight. It was hard to imagine Tsukishima as a little kid in this exact spot, taking his place. He wondered if he'd just been born with the unending scowl that seemed to be permanently plastered on his face, ingrained in every expression, or if there was ever a time when Tsukishima knew how to be happy. Even the thought of his teammate's childhood sent an overwhelming wave of guilt cascading through Sugawara's body.

Amaya quickly finished patching up both hands.

"There you go, dear. Try not to hit them off anything, or they'll start bleeding again." Amaya stood, gathering the leftover supplies in her arms and took them to the sink, setting them on the ledge. She opened the medicine cabinet behind the mirror and, one by one, she put them away.

"Mrs. Tsukishima, I...I need to tell you something." Amaya put the last item in the medicine cabinet and turned to look at Sugawara.

"What is it, dear?"

Sugawara was shivering. The room was beyond humid now, the little heater having all but filled the room with steam. The bathroom felt like a boiling summer day in Tokyo, but the young setter's arms were still covered in goosebumps.

"I...I thought a lot tonight about what happened to Tsukishima, about what I saw, about what I went through tonight, and I keep trying to figure out why I feel so guilty about the whole thing. It wasn't my fault. I didn’t hold up the store, I didn't bring the gun, I didn't pull the trigger, but I still feel it was my fault. I know that somewhere, I shouldn't feel guilty, but I don't believe it. So I've been trying to figure out why, and...and I think I have."

As Sugawara reached the end of his speech, his voice became increasingly shaky, his face contorting into more and more pain. He could feel the emotion rising in the back of his throat. His breathing sped up, and his heart raced. His tongue felt heavy with the the added weight of all the words he was dying to say. Amaya responded with earth-shattering calm.

"Why do you feel it's your fault, Koushi?" As Sugawara prepared himself for the answer he was about to give, he began to cry, his voice broken up between sniffles and gasps for breath.

"Because... Because it should have been me! It was my idea to go into the store! I put him there. I said I'd walk him home, that I'd get him home safely. That responsibility was mine! If anyone should have taken that bullet it should have been me!"

At those words, Amaya got very quiet, giving Sugawara time to calm himself down. As the young man's breathing finally began to return to normal, she spoke again in a tense voice.

"Less than five minutes before you entered this house I asked a police officer if my son was dead. Could you imagine your own mother doing the same? Could you picture her frantically pacing around your hospital room, wondering if she'll ever get to see you open your eyes, or smile again? Or worse, could you picture her crying at your funeral? A parent should never have to bury their own child, Koushi. Kei may die tonight. If he does, I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. But I would never wish that grief on another parent, and you shouldn't either. Especially not your own."

"But I'm so guilty! I hate myself for not being able to stop it!"

"Koushi, honey, look at me." Amaya knelt beside the young man, taking his face in her hands, "Nothing you did could have stopped this from happening. That gunman made the decision to rob the store tonight. He made the decision to pull the trigger. There was nothing you could have done to stop him."

"But how do you know? You weren't there. You didn't see it." Amaya took Sugawara's hands in hers and began to rub large, soothing circles into his palms in an attempt to calm his nerves.

"Because you are a sweet, gentle young man, and you would never do anything to hurt Kei, or anyone else. What you need to remember right now, is that just because you got away from the situation unhurt does not make your life worth any less than my son's. Right now, I'm taking solace in the fact that you weren't hurt, too, and you should do the same. How would your team react if you both had been injured?"

"My team...I still need to tell them..."

"Don't think about that. Think only about what you're going to do right now. You are going to the hospital with us to see Kei, right?"

"Yes. ma'am."

"Then let's go."

"Oh, Mrs. Tsukishima?"

"Yes, dear?"

"When we get to the hospital...I need to tell you what happened."

The pair heard a small creak as the bathroom door swung open to reveal Akiteru standing sheepishly in the hallway.


	6. Chapter 6

It was several minutes before the four of them got on the road. After Akiteru was assured that Sugawara was not being smothered under the weight of his mother's overbearing concern, Ukai alerted the officer, and Akiteru and Amaya piled into the cruiser. Suga and Ukai returned to Ukai's car and followed closely behind them.

Once they'd arrived and said both their thank-yous and farewells to Officer Hashimoto, Sugawara led them to the waiting room just outside Tsukishima's operating room.

"He's through those doors there. He's been in surgery for a while now. Hopefully they'll tell us something soon." the young man said as the group passed through the waiting room door.

They found four chairs next to each other by the information desk and sat down. A sudden fear took hold of Sugawara's mind as he sat directly in the middle of the group, Ukai to his right, Akiteru to his left, with Amaya next to him. This whole situation was insane. Was he really ready to get the story off his chest so soon? He still felt like he was teetering on his emotions' edge; one wrong move and he would fall and break into a thousand pieces. He looked around the drab waiting room for something to ground himself. It was almost completely bare, with nobody but an older man reading a newspaper in a lonely chair in a corner and a young woman half asleep on the other side of the room. A stack of out-of-date magazines lay abandoned on a side table next to the young woman. Sugawara couldn't believe how empty the place looked...how empty it felt. The emptiness was so heavy it was oppressive. He felt like it was squeezing the very life out of him, to the point that he almost couldn't breathe. He chalked that last bit up to anxiety and pushed through the mental wall.

He was shaken out of his thoughts when Akiteru yawned. Trying to lighten the mood a bit, and possibly relieve some of his own terror, Sugawara stammered,

"Somebody's tired." Amaya chimed in.

"It's almost 3am, my baby's probably just exhausted. You had to work early today, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Akiteru said, "I got up at six this morning. The officer actually had to wake me up when we got here - I'd fallen asleep in the car. Talk about embarrassing." He gave a light, but pained chuckle. The group fell quiet for a moment. Before the silence could deepen, Ukai spoke up.

"You fell asleep in the cruiser?" Akiteru turned to look at him.

"Yeah?"

"When we talked not more than fifteen minutes ago you couldn't sit still. You okay?"

Unless he was mistaken, Sugawara could almost see a faint glimmer of guilt pass over Akiteru's features before it was quickly extinguished by a firm mental defense. Akiteru's face hardened, and his exhausted features looked almost angry.

"With all due respect, Ukai, I'm sitting in a hospital at 3am waiting to see if my little brother's gonna die tonight. I'm pretty far from okay." Sugawara figured he'd better dispel this fast, before everyone's exhaustion got the better of them. He cleared his throat rather conspicuously, and the group turned to look at him.

"So, uh...since we're all here, and um...we're not supposed to know anything for a while and we've got some time to kill...I, uh...I figured there was some...information you all should know."

"Sugawara, honey, now?" Amaya asked him, incredulous. He nodded quickly.

"Yeah, now. If I don't do it now, I won't do it at all, and you're his family, so you deserve this information anyway, so here it goes." He closed his mouth before he felt it would run away forever, never to stop talking. He took a moment of silence. He breathed in. He held the air. He let the breath out.

"I need to tell you what happened to Tsukishima...the whole thing. It actually really started earlier today..."

* * *

Sugawara sat at his desk at homeroom at the end of the day. The sun shone brightly through the large open windows, the breeze blowing gently through the unsecured slats. It carried the fresh scent of newly sprouted flowers with it, putting Sugawara completely at ease. He even thought he might do his homework on his porch today, since it was so nice.

"Hey, Suga!"

Daichi was beside him. He didn't expect to see his captain here so quickly. He noticed his classmates packing up to leave, and figured he'd probably spent the last several minutes daydreaming.

"Suga, there's something I need to run by you." Sugawara shook himself out of his springtime haze.

"Sure, what's up?"

"I need to push today's practice back. Coach has a shift at the store, Tsukishima and Yamaguchi have a huge exam they need to study for, and Tanaka's parents are making him go to some event for his sister's college, so none of them are going to be free until later tonight. I don't wanna cancel completely, because the last time I cancelled a practice Hinata and Nishinoya refused to speak to me the rest of the week. You think that's alright?"

"I don't see why not, as long as we clean and lock up after."

"Great. I'm going to send a mass text to let everyone know." And like that he was gone. Sugawara packed up the remainder of his school books and left the classroom.

* * *

The hours had gone by more quickly than Sugawara had expected them to. His homework had taken him longer than he'd expected, since he kept getting distracted and sleepy because of the warm weather, but he was more relaxed than usual and didn't mind. It was already dark out by the time he had begun to pack his volleyball bag, and he noted how strange it felt to begin a practice at the same time he was used to finally getting out of one. Once he'd double-checked that he'd remembered his change of clothes, shoes, water bottle, and wallet, he zipped up his bag and took his phone out of his pocket. After swiping through a few menus, he opened the team group chat and reread his most recent string of texts.

_TeamDad: Hey, guys, friendly reminder: Due to everyone's schedules, practice today won't be until 9pm. Rest up, we're gonna need all our strength for nationals!_

_TheTiniestofGiants: AWW YEAH!_

_KingofSarcasm: You do realize late practice means you can't stay an extra hour and a half after practice ends, right? I refuse to lose sleep over your overly enthusiastic idiocy._

The conversation only got worse from there. Thinking back, Sugawara thought that maybe it was a bit unusual to have a practice at nine o'clock at night, but the rest of the guys were so enthusiastic about it that he quickly pushed the thought away. Who knows? Maybe this practice will be different somehow. People always seemed to have a habit of turning into loose cannons after a certain point in the evening.

Upon arriving at the gym that night, Sugawara noticed his team seemed to have more energy than usual. Hinata and Kageyama were already racing each other around the gym for warm-ups, Nishinoya was receiving Asahi and Tananka's spikes as easily as if they had been aimed directly into the libero's waiting arms. Yamaguchi was already sitting with Tsukishima on the far end of the gym, snickering at whatever snide comment his companion had just made, and Daichi was talking to Ukai about the night's drills.

Sugawara entered the gym and made his way to the club room to change into his workout clothes. Daichi stopped him just before he got to the door.

"Suga! You aren't usually this late. Did something happen?" Sugawara smiled at the captain.

"No, I just lost track of time doing homework again. Sorry, Daichi." Daichi's expression shifted from worried to easygoing and placed a calm hand on his vice captain's shoulder.

"Don't mind, I just wanted to make sure everything was okay."

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Yamaguchi leave Tsukishima's side to talk to Coach Ukai. He was far from them, though, and they seemed to be talking in hushed voices, so Sugawara couldn't hear what they were saying. Yamaguchi's face seemed to give most of the situation away, as it bore a look of concern.

"Uh, hey, Daichi." Sugawara said, "Is Yamaguchi alright?"

"Yeah, I think so. He's waiting for a call from his parents, I think. So he's probably asking if he can keep his phone with his water bottle where he can hear it instead of in the club room."

"Oh okay. I hope it isn't about anything serious."

"Who knows? But hey, you should get ready. We're starting soon."

At that, he left to go round up the team, leaving Sugawara to change.

* * *

Practice that night was unusually intense. Sugawara felt like it was almost as if they were subconsciously making up for not practicing after school earlier. Ukai blew his whistle to signal that it was time for a mid-practice water break, and the team broke their formations and flocked to the collection of water bottles to take a drink. Soon the echo of teenagers shouting and volleyballs bouncing around the gym was replaced by the silence of said teenagers replenishing their exhausted muscles. It was in this silence that Yamaguchi's phone went off.

He had just set his water back on the floor next to where he was sitting when he heard the high-pitched tinkle of his set ringtone and saw the screen flash in the corner of his eye. Setting the water bottle back down beside him, he quickly reached for his phone. He looked at the caller ID and felt his heart sink. His face fell, and Tsukishima, who was sitting next to him, was the first to notice.

"Hm? What's wrong?"

Yamaguchi gave his best friend a fleeting worried look and answered his phone. When he spoke, his voice was small, as if he were trying his best to cram himself into the far corner of the gym, forcing himself into invisibility.

"Mom?" A pause.

"Yeah, they told us that could happen... Yeah, see you when you get here." Tsukishima gave him a hard stare. Yamaguchi spoke before Tsukishima could put words to his thoughts.

"Sorry, Tsukki, my mom's coming to get me. I can't walk home with you tonight." Before Tsukishima could reply, Yamaguchi stood and started to walk away. Tsukishima, however, reached out and caught his friend's arm before he could get very far.

Yamaguchi hesitantly turned to look back at Tsukishima, afraid to look his friend in the eye. He hated being so vulnerable, and he hated leaving practice. It was a quiet sort of embarrassment. He wanted someone like Tsukki to see that he was strong. When he finally looked his best friend in the eye, he couldn't deny the intensity of his gaze, his gold-brown eyes never breaking contact.

"Yamaguchi, what happened?" Yamaguchi hung his head again. At Yamaguchi's seemingly willing defeat, Tsukishima released his hand.

"Um...my dad's been sick for a while and the hospital gave him some new medicine the other day. Well, that call was my mom. My dad just had a stroke. In a way, we sort of knew it would happen, since the doctors told us that it could be a side effect of the medication. Anyway, she's picking me up to go to the hospital to see him."

Tsukishima nodded, looking down and away, as if on one hand, this was an acceptable excuse to him, but on the other he was concerned for Yamaguchi's wellbeing.

"Call me later." Yamaguchi nodded quickly and ran to Coach Ukai.

* * *

It was eleven o'clock by the time practice ended. Once coach blew the whistle, signifying that they could all relax, take a drink of water, and begin cleaning the gym, Sugawara made a beeline for his water bottle. He practically collapsed onto the gym floor, his back resting against the wall knees bent and legs open in front of him, relaxing. He brought the bottle to his lips and took a long, eager swig. It was a full minute before he noticed Daichi had joined him.

"I have no idea how we're going to perfect Nishinoya's libero's toss before nationals. It's not bad, and it worked well in the game against Shiratorizawa, but he still misses more than coach would like."

"He'll get there. He just needs to stop flirting with Kiyoko long enough to get anything done." The two friends laughed as they watched their team's clean up chaos ensue. Hinata and Kageyama were bickering on the far side of the gym as a frustrated Asahi tried desperately (and miserably) to get them to stop fighting and wipe down the floor, since it was their turn and the last time coach caught them fighting everyone had to run laps. Tsukishima had his headphones on in the corner as he methodically put his gym clothes back into his duffel bag. Tanaka had his shirt off, and Nishinoya was slapping him with it as the two chased each other around the gym. Kiyoko and Yachi were talking, as were Ukai and Takeda. Sugawara had no doubt that any minute, their coach was going to turn around mid-sentence and shut up the whole gym.

In the end, it had taken them a whole forty-five minutes to settle down, clean up the gym, and put away all the equipment. Sugawara had spent the last half of practice worrying about Tsukishima. He'd watched Yamaguchi leave practice nearly in tears, and he knew that with all the time he spends around Yamaguchi, Tsukishima had to care about him to some major degree. Though the blond would never admit it aloud, Sugawara was sure his teammate was much more worried about his best friend than he was letting on. Once Ukai told the team about Yamaguchi's father's stroke at the end of practice, Sugawara made up his mind. Whether Tsukishima wanted him to or not, he would walk his teammate home from practice that night.


	7. Chapter 7

It was around 11:45 by the time the boys had cleaned the gym enough for the team to go home. While everyone else was still packing their bags, Tsukishima was already halfway through the gym door, willingly oblivious to the rest of his teammates' antics. Headphones over his ears, he pressed a few times on the screen of his smartphone to begin whatever song he was using to tune out the world, and stuck the phone in his pocket. Hand on the strap of the duffel bag he had slung over his shoulder, Tsukishima strode out of the gym. Sugawara jogged to catch up with him.

"Hey, Tsukishima! I almost missed you!"

The taller boy stopped in his tracks and turned to look at his teammate behind him, pulling the headphones down from his ears in the process.

"Hm? Oh, hello, Sugawara."

"Hey, uh, I was wondering... since Yamaguchi isn't here to walk home with you, would you mind some company on your way back?" For a fleeting moment, Tsukishima looked almost stunned.

"Sure. If you want." Sugawara smiled as the pair left the school.

* * *

The night air was crisp and unsettled, whipping the boys' hair as they walked along the sidewalk under the light of the full moon. Trees rustled around them as the wind dragged its massive hand through their rough green leaves like a toddler at the park. The sound they made was loud and harsh-sounding and Sugawara tried to tune it out, refusing to let his concern ruin his good mood. Failing utterly, Sugawara turned to his teammate.

"Hey, Tsukishima, you think we're going to have a storm? This wind is really kicking up." Tsukishima looked for a moment at Sugawara, and then at the wind ripping through the leaves in the trees above his head.

"It's possible. Let's hope we get home before then. I hate getting caught in the rain."

"Yeah..." Sugawara's voice trailed as he kicked a small pebble along the sidewalk. His teammate's face was so hard to read. Everything he said sounded serious. He could never tell if Tsukishima was angry, sarcastic, or just bored. The confusion made it difficult for him to determine if he'd said something somehow offensive.

Just as Sugawara opened his mouth to attempt to communicate again, Tsukishima's cell phone broke the silence. The setter's ears were suddenly filled with the muffled sound of the start-up jingle to an obscure mobile game. Sugawara had heard about it online, but he hadn't known anyone (except, apparently, Tsukishima), who'd played it. He didn't know much about the game, except that it was notoriously difficult.

The taller blond pulled the phone out of his pocket at the sudden recognizable noise. He tapped the smartphone's screen, shutting off the tune, and put the phone to his ear.

"Mom," Tsukishima said, "Yes, I know it's late... Yeah... It's fine, Suga is walking with me...No, I don't know anything about Yamaguchi's father... Yes, we'll be home within the next twenty minutes... Bye."

"Is everything okay?"

"Yes, my mother is just concerned that our practice ran so late. Thanks to Hinata and Kageyama's fooling around, we got out forty-five minutes after I told her we would."

"Yeah, sorry about that. They can be hard to control." Sugawara paused.

"So, uh, speaking of mothers, I just remembered that my mom asked me to pick up some soda she really likes on my way home. Would you mind if we stopped somewhere?" Tsukishima shrugged, apparently fairly unconcerned about the request.

"It doesn't matter to me. Coach's store is just down the street."

"Well, actually, coach's store doesn't carry the brand she likes. The convenience store a few streets over does, though, if that's okay. I promise it won't take more than a few minutes."

"Okay. Point it out when we get there." Tsukishima replaced the headphones over his ears.

* * *

As the duo turned at a street corner, Sugawara left his sidewalk pebble to kick a new one. He didn't think that walking home with Tsukishima would be this stressful. Tsukishima didn't seem to have an opinion on anything. Everything he felt was always heavily guarded, suppressed to the point of being stoic. It was like he wore a sort of veil at all times. He always acted so noncommittal about everything and everyone around him that it made him extremely hard to read. If his teammates' antics ever did get to him, Tsukishima never let on that he was anything more than mildly irritated. He was the last person Sugawara wanted to see angry because he figured he'd never see it coming.

He wondered if Yamaguchi had ever seen him angry. He knew they were most likely friends before high school, but how long had they really known each other? If Yamaguchi stuck around through Tsukishima's permanent cold shoulder, maybe he'd seen a softer side of his teammate that Sugawara never had? Yamaguchi was such a sweet, good-natured guy. Sugawara found it hard to believe that Tsukishima could spend so much time with someone like Yamaguchi and not care about him.

"Hey, Tsukishima?" Tsukishima pulled his headphones down again. There was a split second when Sugawara thought he saw a moment of annoyance pass over his teammate's face, but he decided that he'd probably imagined it.

"Hm?"

"Did Yamaguchi say anything about his dad before he left? I'm worried about him."

Sugawara was afraid that bringing up someone so close to him would push Tsukishima over the edge, but the damage was not as bad as he feared. Tsukishima simply stayed silent for several seconds. When he finally did speak, his voice was strained, ever so slightly.

"Nothing that would ease your concern." They turned another street corner. Sugawara found another pebble.

"Oh, well, I hope his dad's okay. Strokes can be pretty nasty. My grandmother had one when I was in elementary school. She lost control of the left half of her body and was in rehab for a while to help her walk and feed herself again. I wasn't really old enough to understand what was happening at the time, but my dad was pretty broken up for a while." Sugawara stopped talking when he noticed the vaguely constipated look that his teammate was giving him.

"Uh - that's not to say that all strokes have to be that nasty! Sometimes people make a full recovery almost immediately and there's no lasting damage!"

"Right." Tsukishima put his headphones back over his ears and looked away. Sugawara sighed and looked back down at the pebble he was kicking down the sidewalk. That conversation could have gone a lot better. He wondered what he had to say to get through to someone like Tsukishima. He wanted to make sure his teammate was handling Yamaguchi's situation alright. Maybe...maybe he was prying too much. Maybe the best way to get to know him was to simply let him be, to be in his proximity and let Tsukishima get comfortable being around him. The duo walked the rest of their trek with nothing but the harsh wind to fill their ears.

* * *

Sugawara and Tsukishima reached the convenience store after several more minutes of silence.

"This is the place. It's okay, I know where they keep the soda, so it should only be a few minutes. Especially since it's so late, there shouldn't really be very many customers." Sugawara opened the right-hand door, and the pair entered the store.

The first thing that hit Sugawara when he entered the store was the blinding neon lights, a stark contrast to the midnight darkness outside. A fraction of a second later, his eyes had adjusted, and he peered around the store. He had lots of fond memories of this particular convenience store. Sugawara's mother had grown up in another area of Japan, miles away from the Miyagi Prefecture. When Sugawara was little, his mother loved to tell him the story of how she'd met his father when the two were at university. Their university's cafeteria had this hard-to-find brand of soda that they sold regularly, and his mother loved it so much, that she scarcely drank anything else, other than water and coffee after the occasional all-nighter. His father often told her that one of the first things about her that he first found adorable was her obsession with that soda. He proposed to her their senior year, and when they moved to Torono Town, she was afraid that she would never be able to find the soda again. Lo and behold, they came upon this store when Sugawara was a toddler. His mother had found the soda in the back of the cooler, and was so happy she started crying. His father laughed with her, and even though Sugawara was too young to know what was going on himself, he looked back fondly on the story as a teenager.

They became regulars at the store after that day. Whenever they went on a trip it was always the first place they stopped on the way out of town, and the last place they stopped on the way back - perfect bookends. Sugawara was on a first name basis with every cashier who had ever worked there since that time, simply because his parents always stopped in to talk. He remembered it annoying him when he was kid, mostly because their conversations always lasted for an hour or more, and Sugawara was often tired and wanted to go home.

Of course, it was never all bad. Several times he remembered seeing other kids stuck there while their parents talked. He played with them whenever they would let him. He had fond childhood memories of playing hide and seek behind shelves, and pretending the white floor tiles were lava, jumping from colored square to colored square in gleeful abandon. In retrospect, Sugawara felt like he never truly appreciated those times as a kid. Looking back on them now, he felt like they were a rare treasure, locked safely away in a sealed time capsule, forever entrapping the atmosphere of innocence within its walls. He wanted to keep those memories forever.

Once Sugawara's reverie had dissipated he noticed that he had never seen the cashier before. She was a young woman, probably not much older than himself. She was a slightly heavier-set redhead with an award-winning smile, and Sugawara felt comfortable enough to strike up a conversation with her. Tsukishima awkwardly trailed behind Sugawara as he made a beeline for the register.

"Hey, I haven't seen you here before." The redhead looked a little flustered as her head shot up from behind a computer screen sitting on the counter slightly to Sugawara's left. She had freckles, he quickly noticed. _And dimples. God, I am a sucker for dimples._

"Oh, hi. Sorry, did you need something?" Sugawara figured by the tone of her voice that she was much more scared than she intended on letting on, and he was determined to do something to calm her down.

"No, it's okay. My family and I are regulars here, and I haven't seen you working before. Are you new?" She relaxed a little.

"Yeah, actually I am. I just got the job last week." She was still nervous. Sugawara flashed her a smile.

"Hey, no need to be so tense. Is this your first job?" She relaxed a little more, letting loose a shy smile as she did so. Sugawara's heart melted into a puddle at his feet.

"No, actually, but it is my first time working the graveyard shift. I've never worked at a place like this overnight. And I'm way too big of a scaredy-cat on top of that, so I'm bound to be a little bit of a mess until I get myself settled. Uh, my name's Kiku, by the way." Kiku held her hand out across the counter. Sugawara took it in a gentle handshake.

"Koushi. Funny, you don't look like a chrysanthemum." He chuckled.

"And I suppose you always support your elders?" A small glint of amusement highlighted the airy quality of her voice. After a small pause she turned her attention to Tsukishima, who had been standing stoic through the whole conversation, pretending to be interested in some mint gum on the shelf underneath the counter, down in front of the register.

"And what about you? Koushi, you haven't introduced me to your friend here." Tsukishima lifted his head. Kiku offered a hand to him, and he took it in a stiff handshake.

"Tsukishima."

"Moon island? That sounds more like a last name than a first name. If you don't want to tell me, that's completely okay, but it's hardly polite since your friend was so willing." Kiku said with a light smirk.

Tsukishima caught an annoyed scowl as it passed over his face and squashed it.

"Kei." he responded a little too quietly, "My first name is Kei." Kiku's face lit up.

"Firefly. It sounds magical. It's a shame you keep it so well hidden. Real fireflies are never afraid to show their light." Tsukishima took that opportunity to leave the conversation.

"Right. Well, I'll be in the back looking at the sodas. Excuse me." He made his way to the back of the store. Kiku and Sugawara both watched him leave, Kiku with an expression of confusion, Sugawara with slight exasperation. It was a few seconds before Kiku spoke up. Suddenly shy again, she fidgeted with a frayed green string on her apron.

"So, um, I'm sorry for offending him. Is he okay?" Sugawara turned to look back at her.

"Oh, yeah, Tsukishima's okay. He's just not very good with new people. He needs time to get used to you is all." Silence.

"I should probably go over with him. I am the one who dragged him here, after all."

"Sure, I understand." They waved a little awkwardly at each other as Sugawara turned around and followed Tsukishima to the coolers in the back of the store. Sugawara had hardly reached his teammate before the words escaped Tsukishima's mouth.

"Which brand does your mom like?" It didn't take long for Sugawara to notice the impatience and slight annoyance in Tsukishima's tone for taking the time to have a conversation with the cashier, especially since he'd promised the stop would be quick. For the first time, it occurred to Sugawara that he might have turned out just like his mother.

"Sorry about that," he began, suddenly lowering his voice to just above a whisper, "She's just so cute I couldn't really help myself." Tsukishima gave his teammate a look that registered to Sugawara as vaguely amused.

Unbeknownst to the boys, as they had their backs turned, poring over the sodas, another man had entered the store behind them.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all!
> 
> Thank-you all so much for all the Kudos you've been leaving on this story. It really makes me happy to see that people are getting something out of it! 
> 
> Also, as a warning, this chapter is where the gore starts. If that in any way bothers you, read with caution. 
> 
> That being said, please enjoy chapter eight :)

Sugawara and Tsukishima had no reason to pay any attention to the man who entered the convenience store a mere five minutes after they had. As far as they had any reason to be concerned, he was just another customer who happened to be out late. They had no reason to suspect that he would in any way be motivated to do what he did next. The stranger approached Kiku at the counter, pulled a gun from the back of his jeans, and demanded all the money she had in her register.

"W-what? B-but I - "

"Didn't ya hear me, girlie!? I said now!"

There were many motivations that man could have had for walking into a convenience store, in one of the quietest, calmest towns in the prefecture, past midnight, pulling a gun on the cashier, and demanding a large sum of money. Maybe he had a rough day at work. Maybe he got fired. Maybe his wife is sick. Or his son. Or his daughter. Or his dog. Maybe the store wronged him in the past, and this stunt was the only way, in his mind, to set the record straight. Or maybe, just maybe, he was simply a greedy and twisted man. Whatever his reasons were for doing what he did, the simple fact was that he did it anyway, and about scared Kiku to death. Her frightened tone, however, did not escape Sugawara and Tsukishima's notice.

At the sound of the man raising his voice, Sugawara quickly nudged Tsukishima in the rib cage with his elbow, eliciting a soft grunt from his teammate. Tsukishima turned to look at him, and the two spoke, careful that their voices should not, even for an instant, rise above a whisper.

"Did...Did that guy just do what I think he did?" the silver-haired setter asked his friend. Tsukishima seemed just as incredulous as he was.

"Yes. I think this trip is going to take a little longer than you expected it to, Sugawara." Sugawara almost laughed out loud at Tsukishima's dry sense of humor before he quickly stopped himself. He turned his focus back to the task at hand.

"We need to hide."

"I agree. We're in the back of the store. I don't think he's noticed us yet, but we're the only other customers here. I can't imagine he'd be very happy to find out he has two witnesses he needs to take care of." Sugawara swallowed the nervous lump that had formed in his throat at his teammate's warning.

"Yeah. We need to make sure he doesn't see us. He has his back turned on us right now, since he's facing the register. Let's see if we can hide somewhere." Tsukishima discreetly gestured to the large shelves behind them that ran perpendicular to the coolers.

"If we crouch down and hide behind these, maybe he won't notice us as long as we stay out of the aisles." Sugawara nodded and the pair very slowly lowered their duffel bags to the floor and slunk down onto their knees. Slowly but surely, the boys inched their way so that they were almost leaning against the small edge of a shelf directly behind them.

"I'm not gonna ask you again! Give me the money, you stupid bitch! Or you're gonna get a face full of lead!" He waved the gun around wildly, prompting Kiku to scream as he did so.

Sugawara's blood turned to ice. _She screamed. He has a gun. This is real_. At the shrill sound of Kiku's frightened scream, Sugawara felt like everything inside his body had just stopped cold, frozen in place, as if even the fragile beating of his heart would alert the gunman to their presence. It was as if her fear was a splash of cold water, shocking him into the reality that he was trapped in a highly dangerous situation that could any moment claim his life. He knew he needed to focus his senses. Concentrate. If the gunman did anything that would even remotely suggest the idea that he was on his way to kill them, he needed to be aware of it and ready to handle it. _Handle it? Handle it how? You don't have a weapon. Besides, even if you did have a pocket knife or something on you, what could it possibly do against a gun?_

Sugawara could feel his heart beating louder and faster inside his ears, the fragile sound growing in volume as it seemingly grew in power. The blood rushing through his brain was almost enough to obscure his hearing; he could only faintly distinguish the sounds of the criminal yelling at gentle Kiku to give him the money. _Calm down, you need to calm down, Koushi!_

But he couldn't calm down. He felt his lungs hammering away at the inside of his rib cage; he could more hear than feel his heartbeat by this point. He was sure the whimpering was coming from a voice other than his, a voice he didn't recognize nearly as well as the one he used to keep Hinata and Kageyama in line in practice. He only hardly registered his teammate's harsh whisper coming from his left.

"Sugawara! Sugawara, you need to calm down! If you don't keep a lid on it, he's going to hear us!"

But as much as he wanted to, Sugawara couldn't calm down. He was trembling, his throat was raw from his harsh, heavy breathing, and his pulse flooded past his eardrums with a sickening rush. Tsukishima grabbed his arm and shook him slightly in an effort to snap him back to reality, but the attempt failed. It was not long before the gunman heard their commotion.

"Hey! Hey, you! Is there someone whispering back there? You'd better shut your mouth!" He whipped around to face the back of the store, but in his blind rage, didn't immediately see the two boys. Wildly pointing his gun around the room, Tsukishima could clearly see that the guy was angry to the point of hysteria. And with Sugawara in the full throes of a panic attack, there was no way Tsukishima could quiet him down enough to keep the gunman from blowing their cover.

It was than that Sugawara did something incredibly stupid.

At the sound of the gunman's demanding words, his undeniable panic overcame his usual common sense. Without warning, the third year setter leaped across the aisle towards the door, right in front of the gunman's point of view.

"He's gonna get us! We have to move now!"

"Sugawara, stop!"

But it was too late. Sugawara had already made the leap.

"Hey, what - "

And the gunman was too startled to fire. Sugawara had made it to the next aisle - relative safety.

"Damnit!" Tsukishima, partially out of concern for his friend's safety, partially in the heat of the moment, leaped across the aisle to follow him.

The gunman had overcome his initial surprise. He fired.

...

It was a sound that Sugawara would remember for the rest of his life. The noise around him, the shouting, all died away into one heavy silence and then...

_CRACK_

...

_Thud._

At the moment he first heard it, he knew he would never again hear anything like it. The discharge of the gun was much louder than he expected it to be, like a shot from a movie times twenty. It rang in his ears for several seconds after it happened, like the ghost of a moment that refused to pass. He heard the sickening sound of his teammate hitting the floor, but was too scared to turn around to see if he was still alive.

_Oh, god...that shot was so close...he...he's dead! He's gotta be!_

Refusing to entertain the thought any further, Sugawara knew he needed to move. He heard the assailant's footsteps as he sprinted down the aisle, ready to turn the corner any second to discover Sugawara sitting there dumbfounded. He pulled himself to his feet and moved. Fast. Numb to everything around him, Sugawara ran faster than he had ever run in his life. He dodged between aisles, looking desperately for any sort of cover. As a last ditch effort, he dove behind an ice cream case, and crouched between it and the wall.

_If he finds me here...I'm dead..._

It was then that Sugawara heard a voice, but it was not the voice he was expecting. Instead of the voice of a ravenous murder ready and willing to claim his life, the voice he heard belonged to Kiku.

"Y-You better put the gun down right now! Or I will kill you!"

* * *

Kiku was not a stupid girl. Scared? Yes. Shy? Yes. Stupid? No. She was not stupid. As soon as the gunman turned his back on her, as soon as she was sure the two boys had his full attention, she ran to a phone.

She knew there would be one hanging on the wall just to the right of her cashier station - the elderly man who trained her had told her so.

_"If you need to call someone in an emergency - either one of your managers, the police, anyone - use this phone here. That's what it's for." Kiku smiled and nodded, wondering if she would ever actually need this information._

Well, as it turned out, she did - now more than ever. Huddling against the wall, she pulled the phone off of its hook and dialed the police. A stern-sounding woman answered the line.

"Hello, what is the nature of your emergency?"

"I'm at the Family Mart in Torono Town. A guy just came into my store with a gun. He - he's threatening my customers!"

"How many customers are there in your store right now, ma'am?"

"Just two, but he's really upset. I think someone might get hurt."

"Okay, ma'am -" She was cut off by the sound of a gunshot, followed by Kiku's scream.

"Ma'am? Ma'am, are you alright?"

"Oh, god! He just shot one of my customers! Oh, god, please! I need an ambulance!"

"Okay, ma'am, I'm sending police and paramedics to your location right now. Would you like me to stay on the line with you?"

"N-no, I can't stay on the line. I'm afraid he might see me with a phone." Kiku hung up before the policewoman could respond. Luckily, she knew how to keep the guy busy until police arrived.

_"Now, Kiku, this next bit is very important," the old man was saying, "You're coming back tomorrow for your basic firearms review, yes?" Kiku nodded._

_"Good. We keep a 9mm in a lock box behind the counter. You have to remember, the owner was a cop for 15 years in one of the worst crime capitals of Japan before he and his wife bought this place. He's seen far too much violence in his life, and he considers having a gun and knowing how to use it the height of safety. I understand you have your license already, but we like to play it safe when it comes to our customers and employees, so we're going to review the basics with you just in case. Please understand that you are to use that gun only if your life, or the lives of your customers, are in immediate danger."_

Kiku figured that a situation like this one counted as immediate danger. Right after she hung up with the police she took the few necessary steps back to her counter where she knew the lock box and 9mm would be. Crouching down so the gunman couldn't see her, Kiku knelt in front of the little shelf and put in the box's unlock code. When the latch clicked she carefully opened the lid, revealing the sleek black weapon and a half-empty box of ammunition sitting beside it. Pulling the lock box off the shelf, Kiku set it on the floor and picked the gun from the box, feeling the weight of it in her dominant hand. She opened the magazine and saw that it was full, thanking every deity she could think of that she didn't have to waste time loading it.

She turned off the safety.

This was it. She was about to fire a gun. At a person.

Kiku took a moment and steadied herself. She looked down at her hands and saw how badly they were trembling. Was she really about to shoot someone? Stop it, she chastised herself, this is no time to get cold feet. This guy is threatening my store and my customers. I need to take him out. Besides, it's just like being at the shooting range with dad, right? Kiku stepped out from behind the counter and squared herself with the attacker.

"Y-You better put the gun down right now! Or I will kill you!"

At Kiku's threat, the gunman turned around to see the cashier he had just threatened mere minutes ago pointing a loaded firearm at him. His eyes went wide.

"Hey, now, that's not necessary, little lady. I'm leaving, look! I'm leaving! Just don't call the cops or nothin'!"

Kiku took one last moment to contemplate killing this guy. However, before she could weigh her options, he took off, sprinting from the store in a frightened panic.

Once the gunman had taken off, Sugawara raised himself from the floor and looked at Kiku, who was staring him down in wide-eyed horror, gun still focused in his direction.

"Kiku? Kiku, it's over. Could you, uh, please put the gun away?" She shook her head slightly.

"Huh? Yeah..." She flicked the gun's safety back on and put it on the counter.

"Come on," she ran back to Sugawara and pulled on his sleeve, "We need to check on Kei." Without saying anything more, they ran back to the aisle where Tsukishima had been shot.

They stopped cold at the sight. Tsukishima was lying in a small pool of his own blood, on his side, almost hunched over himself. His arm was covering half his face, and Sugawara could hardly tell if he was breathing. His eyes were closed. At the sudden sight of such a close friend covered in so much blood, Sugawara promptly turned his back on his friend's mangled form and vomited violently onto the floor.


	9. Chapter 9

While Sugawara emptied the contents of his stomach, Kiku recovered enough to run back behind her counter to grab the store's first aid kit. By the time Sugawara had slowly lifted himself off the floor, Kiku returned, white box in tow.

"Come on," she said, "Help me. He could die." Sugawara nodded as he ran with Kiku to Tsukishima's unmoving body. Sugawara had never been around any large amount of blood before, and he was completely unprepared for what he experienced. The pair knelt next to Tsukishima, and Sugawara was close enough that he could smell the heavy stench of iron that emanated from the blood spilling from the open wound. His nostrils flared and recoiled at the wet, metallic stench of warm, raw gore. Another bout of nausea threatened to force its way up Sugawara's throat at the sheer disgust the thought brought him. As he tried to pull himself out of his spiraling thoughts, he realized that Kiku was speaking.

"He's definitely alive," Kiku was saying beside him, "Look, his chest is moving, so he's breathing, at least." He pulled himself together enough to take a hard, critical look at his teammate.

"But listen, he's gasping. His breathing is shallow. You don't think the bullet hit his lung, do you?"

"I don't know. He could just be in pain."

"But - "

"It's not... just pain...I...can't...breathe."

The voice sounded strangled, feeble. Tsukishima wasn't just alive. He was awake. And he was dying.

* * *

"Stop, I can't do this."

Sugawara paused his story and turned toward Akiteru. He wore a look of visible anguish on his face and refused to look Sugawara in the eye. Amaya took her son's hand in hers and spoke softly to him, her voice noticeably strained.

"Akiteru, honey, he needs to get this off his chest. Let him finish." Akiteru stood from his chair, pulling his hand away from his mother's touch.

"No, I just...I can't do this now. Give me a minute. I'm going to the bathroom."

"Akiteru - " She got to her feet, hardly getting more than a step forward before her son interrupted her.

"Sugawara." He spoke without looking at the young man's face.

"Yeah?"

"Was Kei awake the whole time?" Sugawara paused.

"Yeah... Yeah he was."

Akiteru walked out of the waiting room without turning back.

* * *

It didn't take him long to find the men's restroom. He turned a corner at the end of the hallway and saw the door marked "men's" emerge in his field of view. Akiteru opened the door and, when he saw that it was a single bathroom, locked the door behind him. Finally sure that he was alone, he made his way to the sink and let his head hang over the side, his entire upper body supported by nothing but his arms planted firmly on the sink's edge. He lowered his head into the bowl and turned on the cold water. Then, cupping his hands, he splashed his face. Once. Twice. Three times.

_Kei was awake_. That one fact rampaged Akiteru's thoughts, filling every gap, leaving no room for even the smallest afterthought. His little brother was awake through everything. All the pain, the blood, the gasping for air - he was awake through it all. He morbidly wondered how many times Kei closed his eyes and begged for death. How many times did his baby brother wish he were dead as he choked on his own blood? The thought turned his stomach into knots. Suddenly nauseous, he ran to the toilet and leaned over the bowl, spending several minutes dry heaving until his empty stomach calmed down.

The shooter didn't even have the decency to make sure Kei was unconscious. Kei knew he was suffering. He felt the rage swell inside him and beat against his breast, desperate to escape and fulfill its hellish desires. For the first time in his life - Akiteru truly wanted to commit murder.

Shoving the thoughts away, he stood, returned to the sink, and turned the faucet off. Akiteru slowly backed up from the edge and lowered himself onto the floor, wiping his face with his shirt, reclining with his back against the wall. He tipped his head back and spent what felt like hours staring at the tiny cracks in the off-white plaster ceiling.

He almost didn't feel the tears trickle down his cheeks. He just kept thinking about it. Images of Kei on the floor of a convenience store, images of Kei covered in blood, images of Kei begging to be put out of his misery. He pictured him on a slab in a morgue, ugly surgery scar splitting his torso down the center, with his mother weeping - screaming - cradling his little brother's head, kissing his face, while he stood by fuming and blinded by anger and grief. Akiteru swore to himself that whoever this shooter was, he would not escape justice.

Unable to cope with his thoughts anymore, he reached into the pocket of his jacket, grasping for something to settle his mind.

* * *

"I apologize for my earlier outburst," Akiteru said as he re-entered the waiting room, "The hardest thing for me to deal with is the idea that Kei was awake, that he knew what was happening to him." Sugawara gave him a look that was a mix of sympathy and pity.

"It's okay, dear." Amaya said, hardly a whisper, a touch of fragile pain in her voice, "We're all dealing with this in our own way." She kissed his hand again. Ukai gave Akiteru a hard stare.

"Go ahead and continue your story, Sugawara." Akiteru said. Sugawara nodded and picked up where he left off.

* * *

"It's not... just pain...I...can't...breathe."

Sugawara cringed listening to Tsukishima try to talk. His voice was weak and pained, hindered even further by his labored breathing. He was fighting to take his next breath. Sugawara couldn't imagine how much his teammate was suffering.

"W-were you awake this whole time?" he asked. A pause. A sharp intake of breath. Tsukishima very carefully lifted the arm covering his face and slowly rolled onto his back so that he was lying flat. His body shuddered and his face contorted in agony as he did so.

"... Yes."

"Why?" Sugawara asked.

"Because... if he didn't... think... I was... dead... he'd... have shot... me... again...I'm not..." Kiku interrupted him, putting her hand on his shoulder, before he could go on.

"Okay, we get it. Just don't talk anymore. If you are bleeding into your lung, talking is gonna make it worse." Tsukishima stopped talking. Kiku glanced nervously at Sugawara, a silent promise hanging in the air between them. _I have no idea what I'm doing. Ready to save his life?_ Sugawara caught her eye and nodded meekly.

"Let's get down to business. Kei, we're going to do what we can to stop your bleeding, okay? Just stay with us." Kiku paused, swallowing hard before she leaned over Tsukishima and gently probed his rib cage with her fingers, trying to feel where the actual injury was located. The blood was gathered on his right side, around his lower ribs, but her main problem was that there was so much blood everywhere, soaking his t-shirt, staining the waistband of his jeans, and pooling on the floor as well. She was surprised he was still conscious. She'd never actually seen a person lose a lot of blood before, but she'd always imagined they would pass out pretty quickly. Looking at Kei now... she had no idea how long he would last.

Kiku found the wound a few seconds later. After probing around his rib cage some more, she found a small hole that, oddly enough, seemed to have a bit of suction to it. Did that mean his lung had been injured after all? She knew from her basic human anatomy course that the chest cavity was a negative air space. There wasn't supposed to be any air between the inner wall of a person's chest and their lung. Logic would dictate that, if there's a hole and there's suction, then clearly there's some combination of air and blood in the space that shouldn't be there. At any rate, there was no way they were going to be able to effectively staunch the wound without using some gauze from the first aid kit, and they would never be able to do that with his shirt in the way.

"Kei, we need to get your shirt off to bandage the wound. Can you get it off on your own?" Tsukishima carefully shook his head.

"Right. Then I'm going to cut it off. Koushi, I need the scissors, gauze, and tape from the first aid kit."

Sugawara simply stared at her for a few seconds in stunned silence at her sudden ability to take charge before reaching into the first aid kit. His hands quickly found the scissors, along with medical tape and a roll of gauze, and he placed all three within Kiku's reach as she kept her hands pressed onto Tsukishima's wound. Sugawara continuously fought the nausea that rose in the back of his throat as he watched the blood slowly engulf Kiku's hands.

Kiku lifted her dominant hand from the wound and fit it into the scissors' grip. She turned back to Sugawara.

"Okay," She breathed, mentally preparing herself for what she was about to do, "Koushi, I can tell from the look on your face that you don't really handle blood well, but I need my other hand to keep the shirt steady as I cut, so I need you to put pressure on the wound." Sugawara's eyes widened.

"M-me? Sure..." He scooted a few inches to where Kiku was now on her knees positioned above Tsukishima, straddling him at the waist, trying to get the best possible vantage point to deal with his injury. Kiku lifted her remaining hand from the wound, and Sugawara warily put his in its place. The first thing he noticed about the wound was how warm and sticky it was. He'd never made it a habit to memorize what blood felt like, but after tonight he knew it was a sensation he'd never forget. He could feel the slight suction as Tsukishima's most likely injured lung tried desperately to take in air. The wound was wet and fleshy, and underneath Tsukishima's continuous gasping, Sugawara could feel his teammate's rib cage try again and again to expand, writhing under his touch. Every time it did, Sugawara could feel more blood ooze from the wound.

Wait... Something isn't right here... Tsukishima's rib cage... Sugawara couldn't quite place his finger on it, but there was something...out of place about his teammate's lower ribs. It didn't take him long to realize what it was.

"Uh...Kiku..." Kiku looked up from what she was doing, her blood-soaked scissors halfway through Tsukishima's shirt.

"Kiku, I think one of his ribs is broken. Right around the bullet wound one of his lower ribs doesn't connect all the way." Kiku went back to cutting through Tsukishima's shirt.

"The bullet probably broke it. Actually, that might be why it didn't just go straight through him - hitting a bone dead-on would probably slow the momentum. He's lucky, though. If the bullet had gone straight through him, we'd have to plug up two holes instead of just one."

When Kiku finished cutting through the shirt, she removed it from Tsukishima's body. For the most part, it was easy - until she reached the cloth that was touching the wound. If there were patches of blood that had started to dry against his skin, then the shirt would probably tear them off as she pulled it from its place. Given that the wound was bound to be sensitive, she had no idea how much it would hurt him, or how much it would damage his chances of living through the ordeal.

"Kei, how are you doing? You still with us?"

The blond gave a muffled "...Yes..." in response. If his voice was weak before, Kiku noticed, then that was nothing compared to what it was now. Now, he was hardly speaking above a whisper. It was a sure sign - they were running out of time. She took a second to look at Sugawara, to see how he was holding up. He seemed like a nice guy, but there was no way he could have handled this situation without her. He was staring at Tsukishima's wound, wide-eyed and pale. He probably had a phobia of blood, or something close enough to it. Or maybe it was just the shock of seeing someone he knew go through such traumatic injury. Either way, she was going to have to do most of the heavy lifting until the paramedics got there, because she had a feeling if Sugawara tried to do it himself, he might actually pass out.

"Okay, Koushi, I need you to remove your hands - not now, when I tell you to - so I can remove his shirt, okay?" Sugawara nodded, a faraway look in his eye.

"Okay... now." Kiku peeled the damaged cloth off the wound as quickly as she could, like ripping off a band-aid, eliciting a wince and a deep groan from Tsukishima. As soon as the cloth was gone, the plugged up, unclotted blood spurted from the opening as soon as the pressure was relieved. Sugawara covered the wound again before he could start dry heaving.

"Alright, good...I think. Now we need to clean it... or at least get most of the blood off." After looking around for a few seconds, she saw the cut pieces of Tsukishima's t-shirt, most of them, except for the part that was covering the wound and its surrounding skin, were actually somewhat clean. She gathered the tattered cloth into a wad and handed it to Sugawara.

"I need you to use this to wipe as much of the blood from his skin as you can, okay?" Sugawara nodded again. He took the wad of cloth and dabbed the wound with it, soaking up as much of the blood as he could while somehow managing not to throw up again. Once he had gotten just about as much as he figured the cloth would hold, he looked up to see Kiku holding a large folded wad of gauze.

"Okay, so I have no idea how to actually bandage someone, but given what we have, this is going to have to do. I'll press it to the wound, but I need you to tear off long strips of tape and hand them to me one at a time, okay?" Without speaking Sugawara took the tape from the floor and did as she asked. He watched as Kiku did her best to cover the wound, but it looked like a futile effort. A large amount of blood had already accumulated around the wound, and he noticed that Tsukishima's gasping was getting worse than it had been only a few minutes ago.

After a few seconds Kiku had covered the wound with her makeshift bandage and had it securely taped in place. However, they both knew that if the paramedics didn't arrive soon, it wouldn't be long before they would have to replace it and do everything over again. Hell, if they don't arrive soon, Sugawara thought, it's not going to matter.

"Good. Done." Kiku said, breathing a quick sigh of relief before jumping back into the action, 

"Kei? Kei, are you still with us?"

Tsukishima's answer this time around was even less coherent that his last. He gave them nothing more than an almost inaudible mumble, his head lolling around slightly on the tile floor, his eyes glassed over, staring somewhere beyond Kiku and Sugawara.

"Kei, I need you to answer me." He lifted himself very slightly off the floor, turned his head to one side, and hacked violently for what felt like minutes. As he coughed Kiku and Sugawara watched what could only be described as globs of blood fall sickeningly to the floor. When he'd finally finished, he relaxed again and let his head roll to the side, blood staining his lips. He closed his eyes.

"Hey, no! You can't pass out now, you need to stay with us, Kei, please!" Kiku shouted, her voice cracking as she called his name. She reached for his hand and squeezed it tight. At the sound of her panicked voice, Tsukishima slowly opened his eyes, keeping himself from slipping into oblivion. Kiku sighed in relief. He was still here.

It was at that point Sugawara truly noticed what was going on. His teammate's face was pale, his skin almost grey. Sweat poured from his face. He reached over to Tsukishima's neck and took his pulse. It was thready, beating fast underneath cool, clammy skin. He could hardly tell it was there. Sugawara knew - there was no doubt now.

"Kiku... He's in shock. From the blood loss. Pretty soon..." Sugawara whispered, hardly able to believe it himself, tears beginning to well up in the corners of his eyes, "Pretty soon... If the ambulance doesn't get here now... he doesn't have a chance... Kiku... He's gonna die..." She turned to look at Sugawara, tears forming in her eyes as well. The ambulance had to be almost here. There was no way he could die now, not after they were _so close._

As if in answer to a prayer, Kiku and Sugawara's ears were filled with a sound that, in that moment, could only be comparable to an angel's chorus: ambulance sirens.


	10. Chapter 10

Sugawara almost cried the moment he heard the police and ambulance pull into the convenience store parking lot. They were here. Tsukishima was going to live.

The store's double doors burst open as police officers and paramedics rushed into the building. Sugawara almost laughed, despite himself. He couldn't imagine what those officers and paramedics were thinking, entering a store and seeing three kids on the floor covered in blood in the middle of the night. He felt like something had snapped inside himself, like there was a barrier of sanity he had somehow crossed over without his own knowledge. Unable to keep himself together any more, the sight of the paramedics - dare he call them his saviors - had pushed his sanity further than he'd ever intended to go. Releasing the terror-tinged joy bubbling deep inside his chest, Sugawara laughed.

As his insane laughter died down, he could feel himself start to slip back into his subconscious, escaping the trauma of his situation. He felt himself mentally slip backwards, as if he were trust falling into an absolute darkness. As he was falling he reached out and caught himself, anchoring himself to reality. _No, I need to stay with it. Tsukishima could still need me. I've failed him too much already._

It was at that point he realized he was still sitting on the floor of the convenience store. He registered that someone was yelling.

"Get that kid out of here, now!"

As if on cue, he felt a pair of strong hands lift him to his feet and lead him away from the commotion. He registered that the person was speaking to him, but he was too far away to care. It was like they were speaking across the room through a barrier of glass - there, but not there. Several seconds later, he had pulled himself together enough to understand the person's words.

"I'm going to ask you again, can you tell me your name?"

"... Koushi Sugawara."

"How old are you, Koushi?"

His mind continued to fog over. Struggling, he pushed through.

"Eighteen."

"Can you tell me where you are right now?"

"... Family Mart. In Torono Town."

"What day of the week is it today?"

"... Thursday."

"Okay. Koushi, you need to stay with me right now, alright? Everything's going to be okay. Do you know the boy who was shot?" He felt a pair of large hands drape him with a warm, heavy cloth.

"...Yeah. I go to school with him. He's on my volleyball team."

The paramedic had probably begun to say something else to him, but in that moment, he didn't care. He turned his attention to the police officers milling around the store, marking different areas, keeping the general populace - who had begun to gather near the doors at the sound of the sirens - at peace and out of the way.

"Sir, I need you to move. We need to do our jobs," one officer was telling someone. A woman with him seemed to be shouting into the crowd.

"Hey, did anyone catch a good look at that guy?"

Another officer had taken Kiku aside. She trembled as she cleaned the blood from her hands with an alcohol wipe, answering all the officer's questions. Her adrenaline seems to be wearing off, too, Sugawara found himself thinking as he watched her revert back into the shy, backwards, and exhausted cashier he'd met upon walking into the store.

Sugawara turned his attention to Tsukishima, who was, at this point, being swarmed by paramedics. They were replacing Kiku's soaked gauze with a proper bandage, and Sugawara could hear another paramedic try to speak to Tsukishima.

"Hello, my name is Kaede. I'm a paramedic, and I'm here to help you. Can you tell me where you are?" She knelt down and took his wrist. After Tsukishima didn't answer, his glassy-eyed expression focused somewhere on the ceiling, she looked over at her colleagues.

"He's conscious, but not responding to verbal stimuli. Pulse is thready, breathing is severely compromised." She turned to someone next to her, "This kid's lost a lot of blood. His next stop is cardiac arrest, so keep an eye on his pulse." Another paramedic handed Kaede an oxygen tank and she held the connected mask to Tsukishima's mouth and nose and fastened it in place as two more people carefully lifted him and rolled him onto a backboard. They had him quickly secured, transferred him to a gurney, and wheeled him out of the store.

As they did so, Sugawara felt the pair of hands guide him by the shoulders and lead him toward the store's exit.

"Now, Koushi, we need you to come with us to the hospital. In addition to making sure you're okay, we also need you to answer any questions about your friend that we may need answered, since he can't answer for himself. Do you understand?" Somewhere far away from himself, Sugawara nodded.

"What's your friend's name?"

"Kei Tsukishima."

"Do you know when his birthday is?" Sugawara closed his eyes. He tried to remember the beginning of the school year, when Daichi showed him the first years' club applications. They all had birthdays filled in.

"Um...September 27, 2000... I think."

"And last one: do you have any of his emergency contact info? Any way we can reach his family?"

Sugawara thought for a moment, before hanging his head. Tsukishima's club application probably had that information, but he hadn't looked at the forms enough to know any of it offhand.

"No... I don't."

"That's okay, thank-you."

The paramedic helped Sugawara climb into the ambulance, sitting him down on a small chair near the front of the vehicle, closer to the driver's seat. He watched wide-eyed as the other paramedics, Kaede included, wheeled Tsukishima's gurney in behind him, climbing in and shutting the doors. Sugawara's paramedic informed them of the information he had relayed. Kaede nodded and pressed a small button on a radio beside her as the ambulance kicked into drive.

"Miyagi General, this is Ambulance 72. We're en-route with a 16-year-old male gunshot victim with a sucking chest wound, name Kei Tsukishima. He's conscious, but unresponsive to verbal stimuli and in stage 4 hypovolemic shock. Current vital signs: Blood pressure is 65/50 pulse is 110, respiration is 36. ETA is 5 minutes."

After Kaede finished contacting the hospital, she turned her attention from the radio back to Tsukishima and the other paramedics.

"We need to get a chest tube for this kid before he suffocates. Someone get me a scalpel." Different people began to pull different supplies from drawers and cabinets - tubes, scalpels, some sort of canister among other things- and hand them to Kaede. She took some sort of cloth and wiped down a portion of the skin around Tsukishima's rib cage. Once she had made a small incision in the space she began to feed a plastic tube that seemed to be connected to some sort of canister in through the hole. Other paramedics chimed in to secure the tube with other various supplies while Kaede turned her attention to other matters: setting up a heart monitor and, once they had Tsukishima's medical records from the hospital, hanging IVs for blood transfusions and various medications.

Sugawara watched the paramedics flock Tsukishima. They're doing everything they can to keep him alive, he found himself thinking as he watched them constantly check and re-check his vital signs. He listened to the ambulance's rumbling as it sped down Torono's streets, listened to the shake of various supplies in the ambulance as it occasionally hit small bumps in the road, and listened to the little heart monitor as it constantly kept to the rhythm of Tsukishima's heartbeat, getting lost in the commotion. Still high on adrenaline, Sugawara fought to settle his stomach as the ambulance swayed, turning a corner.

"It's so fast..." he mumbled, his eyes never breaking contact with the heart monitor. The paramedic at his side, as if reading his mind, immediately responded.

"It's called Sinus Tachycardia - probably because his blood pressure is so low." Sugawara suddenly turned to look at her. She paused slightly before continuing.

"Whenever you lose a significant amount of blood, your heart then has less blood to send oxygen to all your organs. When that happens, your heart pumps faster to make up for the difference, to keep your body running smoothly and minimize the damage, so to speak."

"He won't be able to keep that up forever..." She looked down, refusing to make eye contact with Sugawara.

"No, he won't. If we don't get his bleeding under control the blood loss will become too much for his heart to compensate for anymore. His organs won't be getting the oxygen they need. His heart will keep trying to compensate until it quits." Sugawara looked down as well, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. Tsukishima could still die. Even though he was alive when the ambulance got here... they still may have been too late. He could still die.

"C - can I ask you a question? And don't sugar-coat your answer - please." The paramedic looked back up at Sugawara.

"Of course."

"Is - is Tsukishima going to die? I mean... is he too far gone?"

"Right now, your friend is in stage four hypovolemic shock. Stage four is the most severe stage. What that means is that he's lost over forty percent of his total blood volume. To be frank, in the condition he's in right now, his heart could give out at any moment. If he passes out and goes into cardiac arrest right now, there's a very slim chance that we'll be able to bring him back. Should he get to the hospital in time, he'll need a team of trauma surgeons to operate on him immediately. They'll most likely open him up and begin tying off different blood vessels to keep him from losing any more blood while they repair any damage the bullet caused as quickly as they can. Trauma surgery is always extremely risky. A thousand different things could happen while he's on the table, and sometimes it takes nothing short of a sure hand and a miracle. I'm sorry. It's grim, but that's the un-sugar-coated reality."

She watched Sugawara pale more and more as she told him his friend's chances. She needed to save this conversation. Despite the fact that he asked for the brutally honest truth, she needed to give him some glimmer of hope. She took his shoulders and faced him.

"Listen. Just because the situation's grim right now does not mean that things are absolutely going to turn out that way. His fate is not sealed. He may be hanging by a thread, but the fact is that right here, right now, your friend is alive. It is absolutely possible for him to survive and make a full recovery, and these people here and in the hospital are going to do everything in their power to make sure that happens." Sugawara smiled faintly at the paramedic beside him, his expression quickly deteriorating from a half smile to a grimace. When he spoke, his voice quieted to almost a whisper.

"Thank-you... I understand, but... I'm sorry... I just can't hope for something that seems impossible. I... I feel like I've failed him."

They arrived at Miyagi General Hospital before the paramedic could respond. As the ambulance pulled up to the emergency drop-off point, Sugawara had a sudden flashback to a memory from when he was very little. When he was about five or six, he'd fallen from a chair trying to reach some dishes in the top shelf of a cabinet in their kitchen. When he fell, his face had bounced off the counter on the way down, breaking some blood vessels and causing a nosebleed. He felt something warm and wet tickle his upper lip, and went to wipe it away as if he just had a runny nose. When he removed his hand and saw that it was blood, he started to cry hysterically. 

Thinking back on the incident now, Sugawara realized he was probably more scared at the sight of blood than he was in pain, but that didn't stop his panicked mother from practically sprinting into the kitchen the moment he'd begun yelling. She'd tried to plug up his nose with napkins and paper towels, but the bleed hadn't even slowed down after several minutes. When tiny Sugawara had begun to complain that his head "felt funny," that was the last straw. She took him into her arms, put him in the car, and rushed to the emergency room. As the doctor there took a look at Sugawara's nose, the blood finally slowed to a trickle and soon stopped altogether. The doctor had told his mother that he'd probably just burst a particularly nasty vessel when he'd hit his face on the counter, and that he'd be fine. The doctor ended the visit by handing Sugawara a bright red lollipop and telling him to ask his mom for help the next time he wanted something he couldn't reach. He'd associated that bright red lollipop with blood ever since.

_It feels so strange_ , he thought as the ambulance doors opened to reveal the hospital's emergency entrance, _The same hospital that cared for me over something so innocent will now try to save my friend's life in a time of crisis._

Sugawara snapped back into reality just in time to hear Kaede shout something to the other paramedics. Together they pushed Tsukishima's gurney out of the ambulance. Despite how much worse he looked now than when he was still in the store (Sugawara didn't think it was possible), his eyes were still open - glassy and unfocused - but open and shifting around, staring past the faces surrounding him. That paramedic was right. He was still here. Slowly, a tiny glimmer of hope deep inside his chest flickered to life.

Shortly after Tsukishima and his team of paramedics disappeared through the hospital doors, his own paramedic took him inside herself.

"Come on," she said, gently helping Sugawara to his feet, "We need to get you inside, too, so they can check you out."

* * *

Sugawara sat on the edge of a gurney in a plain white room. The doctor standing in front of him had spent the last several minutes doing various tests to make sure Sugawara hadn't been injured in the incident as well - two fingers at the wrist to check that his pulse was normal, a thermometer to check that his temperature was normal, a blood pressure cuff to check that his blood pressure was normal, and an accurate count of his breathing to make sure his respiration was normal - at least normal for someone coming down off of shock. The doctor also asked Sugawara various questions to make sure that he was both coherent and unharmed, including many of the same questions that the paramedic had asked him earlier, questions like who he was, how old he was, and if he knew his present location. As his adrenaline wore off, he found it easier and easier to focus on the questions, much easier than when the paramedic had asked him. He supposed this meant he was calming down.

"You don't feel any pain anywhere?" the doctor asked.

"No, nothing." Sugawara replied.

"Well, you don't seem to have any obvious injuries anywhere and all your vital signs check out fine. I'd say you're good to go talk to the officers now, Sugawara." Sugawara thanked him and nodded, turning his attention to the police officer who had been standing sternly by the door. He approached Sugawara with a firm expression.

"Young man, my name is Officer Hashimoto. You've witnessed a serious crime, and I have a few questions I need to ask you." Sugawara stayed where he was, startled by the man's imposing aura.

"O-of course, officer. What do you need to know?"

Sugawara then proceeded to answer all the officer's questions about the incident: What his name was, what the victim's name was, how old they were, how they knew each other, and, most importantly, what happened. Sugawara retold the story the best he could, trying his best to leave out the unimportant bits, like his heart-stopping fear at the sight of Tsukishima's blood, or his overwhelming guilt at being the one who put him in that situation to begin with. The interrogation seemed to take forever, and Sugawara was relieved when it was over and he could finally settle himself after everything.

After Officer Hashimoto dismissed him, he got down from the gurney and wandered out into the hallway, trying to find someplace quiet to collect his thoughts. Out of habit he took his phone from his pocket to check the time, unlocked it, and almost dropped it out of surprise. First of all, it was after 1:30 in the morning already. Second of all, he had fifty-three missed calls from his mother. He was initially surprised that he'd never heard it ring, but quickly remembered that he'd put it on silent before practice started in the event that, should someone need to go into the club room for some reason, it wouldn't disturb them. He'd planned on calling his mom after they got out of the convenience store to let her know he was on his way home, but with everything that happened afterward, he had much more important things on his mind to worry about.

As if on cue, the phone rang again. Sugawara answered it, eliciting a cry of relief from his mother.

"Koushi Sugawara, where on earth are you? I've been calling you for the last two hours and you haven't answered once! I was this close to calling the police to report you missing!"  
He told his mom where he was, and about everything that happened, the shooting, the ambulance ride, and the officer's questioning.

"Oh my god, Koushi, tell me you're okay."

"I'm fine, mom. The doctors checked me out, nothing's wrong. I'm fine."

"You need to come home right now and let me squeeze the pudding out of you, you hear me? I could have lost you, young man!"

"Mom... I can't. Tsukishima's in surgery... It's my fault he's here... I need to make sure he's okay. At least let me stay until the doctors come out to say things are fine. Please?" Mrs. Sugawara was silent for a long time. Her Koushi could have been killed. He could have ended up in that other boy's place. She wanted nothing more than to hold him tightly in her arms and be assured that he was okay, but he felt personally responsible for his friend's injury. She knew the kind of parental instinct her son had for his volleyball team. Maybe...maybe it was finally time for her boy to grow up.

"If that's what you need to do, Koushi. I can't come get you myself anyway, since your father forgot to call the mechanic today and the car's still not running. But if you get overwhelmed, please, please call someone to take you home." She begged as her voice quieted to almost a whisper, "Promise me."

"I understand, mom. I promise. Thanks." They both hung up, and as Sugawara looked down at his phone once again, he noticed it was almost 2am. _That conversation took over twenty minutes..._

But he wasn't done yet. If he was going to take responsibility for this incident, he needed to make one more phone call. He may not be able to contact Tsukishima's parents, he didn't have their numbers, but there was one more number he did have. Sugawara opened his contacts list and dialed Coach Ukai.


	11. Chapter 11

"By the time coach had picked up the phone I was getting hysterical again. I knew I needed to take responsibility and let the team know, but it was really hard getting to the point that I could function enough to make good on that promise. Anyway," Sugawara paused, looking specifically at Amaya and Akiteru, "After coach picked me up we went straight to your house... and the rest you know." The group sat quiet for a while after Sugawara stopped talking, digesting the magnitude of his story. After a little while, Ukai stood and broke the silence.

"Well, Sugawara, you have one more group of people you wanted to talk to, right?" he said as he took his cell phone from his pocket, holding it up for the group to see, "I'm going to call a few parents." With that, Ukai left the waiting room. Amaya waited until the door eased shut before addressing Sugawara.

"Koushi, honey, that was a very brave thing for you to do, telling us this so soon. I'm very proud of you." She reached over and squeezed Sugawara's hand.

"Thank-you...I do feel a little better, like a weight's been lifted. But...I don't think I've actually said this out loud yet, so here it goes... Akiteru, Mrs. Tsukishima... I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for what happened. I'm sorry I couldn't stop it. I'm sorry I couldn't get over my fear when it mattered most. I'm sorry that your lives can never be the same because I made a mistake."

"Sugawara, the only mistake you made is blaming yourself." Akiteru said, "You didn't cause any of this to happen. That lunatic would have walked into that store with a gun whether you and my brother were in it or not. If you hadn't stopped there he wouldn't have gotten hurt, that much is true. But that doesn't make it your fault that it happened. There was nothing you could have done. You could never have known."

"Honey, you're never going to get over this until you forgive yourself. In order to find peace, you need to allow yourself to believe that it wasn't your fault." Sugawara brought his knees up to his face, and hugged them against his chest. He tried to shield his eyes from the Tsukishimas, embarrassed that they would see him cry yet again.

"I... I can't. If he dies... I'll have to live the rest of my life knowing that my one stupid decision was what took his future from him, from you." Amaya nudged Akiteru and he stood, switching seats with his mother so she could be closer to Sugawara. Sitting down again, Amaya reached over and draped her arm around Sugawara's shoulders. She'd lived long enough to know the kind of psychological agony Sugawara would experience before he could begin to heal. Nobody recovered from trauma easily. She ran her fingers on her other hand through his silver bangs and caressed the side of his face.

"Koushi, I forgive you. Even if he dies, I forgive you. Please... Please forgive yourself."

At those words, the dam burst. Sugawara cried once again, feeling his tears follow the same burning trail down his face that they had been all night. He let out another small cry that was more a release of voice than an active effort.

"How? He's your son! You gave him life! How could you possibly forgive me for cutting that life short?"

"Because I'm a mother! Do you really think you never did anything to hurt your own mother, Koushi? She forgives you on a daily basis because you are the light of her world. She gave everything to nourish you into your adulthood, just like I did with Kei and Akiteru. Being a mother is not easy. I am not forgiving you because it's easy. I'm forgiving you because you deserve forgiveness. Because mothers forgive."

As Sugawara started to slip away from reality, crying harder and harder, he let his head rest against the back of the chair. With his head tilted back towards the ceiling, he released all the emotions his story brought back to the surface. Amaya, upon seeing Sugawara suffer, sat herself on the edge of Sugawara's chair and pulled him into her arms. She pulled him close to her, feeling him tense and clutch the edge of her shirt in distress. _It's okay, Koushi, it's not the end of the world_ , she thought as she let him cry into her shoulder.

* * *

"Well, that's everyone." Ukai said as he re-entered the waiting room several minutes later, "I called everyone's parents, except of course for you, Mrs. Tsukishima, since you're here, and your parents, Sugawara, since you already told them. I didn't give any specific details, I just apologized for calling so late and said that there was an emergency that I didn't feel was appropriate to disclose over the phone. A few of them were pretty grumpy when I called, seeing as how it's almost four in the morning, but everyone said they'd make sure their kids showed up, so as far as I know everyone should be there." Ukai turned to Sugawara, who was once more sitting normally.

"That means if we're going to have this team meeting, we need to leave now, Sugawara." Sugawara nodded and rose from his chair.

"We'll see you later," Ukai said as the two exited the room, "Call me if anything happens."

"And, Mrs. Tsukishima," Sugawara began, turning his head back from the doorway to face Amaya, "Thank-you. Thank-you for everything you've said to me tonight."

"You're very welcome, Koushi." She smiled as Ukai and Sugawara left the room. Once they were gone, Amaya opened her purse and began to ruffle through it, taking out her wallet and looking through her cards. Her face fell, and she looked in her purse once again. She sighed after several seconds and turned to Akiteru.

"Akiteru, honey, I need to run home. Sooner or later they're going to need me to fill out paperwork for this mess, and I don't have any of your brother's insurance information on me. I shouldn't be gone long, but promise me you'll be okay here by yourself?" Akiteru gave his mother a half smile.

"Mom, I'm twenty-two. I'll be fine."

"You'll call me if the doctors come out to tell us anything?"

"Yes, I promise." Smiling, she bent down to kiss him on the cheek.

"Okay, baby, see you in a bit. Love you!" Amaya, too, walked out of the waiting room, leaving Akiteru alone with nobody but the two strangers to wait with him.

* * *

Tadashi Yamaguchi sat awake in his bedroom even though it was close to four in the morning, and told himself that he was sure tonight was the worst night of his life. He and his mom had actually gotten home from the hospital hours ago, but Yamaguchi still couldn't sleep. He kept thinking about his father's fate. His illness wasn't life-threatening, but the doctors had admitted that his stroke was an incredibly rare side effect to the medication. They had really only warned them about it because it was a possibility. They never thought it would actually happen.

Yamaguchi and his mother sat in the waiting room for over an hour earlier that evening before their doctor came in to tell them _anything_. It was agony, waiting in ignorance for that long, and he had a hard time keeping himself calm. He kept spiraling, letting himself think of all the possibilities of what could have gone wrong in his father's brain. What if he couldn't speak anymore? What if he couldn't walk? Or feed himself? What if he couldn't remember his family? He let himself snowball until his mother caught the pained expression on his face and had to talk him out of it. After about the fourth time, she took him down to the cafeteria to get him some french fries to calm him down.

He sat waiting in the Miyagi General Hospital cafeteria while his mother stood at the counter and ordered their food. It was as he sat at the two-person table staring out the window beside him that he realized he hadn't eaten anything since before practice. When his mom came back with their tray, french fries and a soda for him, a smoothie for her, Yamaguchi snapped back to reality and tried to focus on his food. Maybe the french fries would calm him down a bit. Maybe he was just freaking out so much because he was hungry. _Probably not_ , he thought as he opened his soda with a crack, _but thinking that's true might make me feel better_. He took a sip of his soda. Vanilla Coke. Mom knew his favorite foods. He would wait to touch the french fries, though. They were still hot. He needed to wait until they were cool enough that the grease had begun to soak into the fries - then they would be delicious.

His mother tried to have one of those deep, feel-y sort of conversations with him, but Yamaguchi was such a strange combination of exhausted and high-strung that he really didn't have the mental energy to spare. Besides, he knew she was only trying for his sake; she had never been very good at those herself. After several attempts at starting a meaningful conversation, she had finally suggested that maybe he call Tsukishima. She reminded him that Tsukishima was really the only close friend he'd ever had, and if he wasn't going to talk to her about his father, he might as well talk to someone he was actually going to listen to. That last part stung a bit. Yamaguchi always hated being in high-stress situations with his mother because she always had this habit of blowing everything way out of proportion. He never felt like he could share his true feelings because she would always make the conversation about her if things didn't go her way. He loved his mother dearly - she was just never very good at handling emotions.

As it turned out, they didn't have much to worry about after all. For the most part, his father's brain was fine. Memory was intact, basic bodily functions were all intact. The only problem he seemed to have was a little bit of trouble with some twitching in his right arm. No problem, the doctors said, they had therapy to help stroke victims with motor control, they just needed to keep him overnight to run a few more tests to make sure there weren't any other affected areas of his brain. Yamaguchi was relieved. His mother - not so much. She started yelling at the doctor for not knowing what he was doing, saying that they should know what's wrong after all that time they spent refusing to give her any information. Yamaguchi only barely got his mom to leave without throwing something by repeatedly reminding her that he had a huge exam at school tomorrow. Even then, she still stomped off fuming, practically dragging Yamaguchi by the arm the whole way to the parking lot.

After he got home he immediately went up to his room to try to study. Unfortunately the exam was a math exam, with a focus on probability, no less. He hated math, even though he was somewhat good at it. He preferred English, really. Sometimes he found himself jealous of Tsukki's family, since they all had a pretty good grasp of such a complicated language. Tsukki's father had always been fluent, but since he'd started working in America several months ago, he made it a point to speak English in the house sometimes, even when Yamaguchi was visiting. Tsukki had a pretty solid understanding of English by this point, a trait which he flaunted during their last English exam when he neglected to study because his father had already taught him everything the exam covered, and he still managed to get a high grade anyway. He wished he was as good at picking up information as Tsukki was. He was smart, too, but he often felt like he worked harder at it than his best friend did.

After an hour or two of getting far too distracted by his situation with his father to properly study, Yamaguchi gave it up as a bad job and just sat at his desk on his phone instead. It was around 2am when he'd considered finally calling Tsukki like his mother had sarcastically suggested hours ago. He was never very good with emotions, but maybe his friend could provide him with some logical insight that would help him think his way through this. Tsukki was always good at thinking his way through things.

In the end he'd decided not to bother Tsukki. Although he had no doubt his friend would answer the phone knowing he was in distress, even at such a late hour, he still felt weird about calling him. It's not like it was an emergency. Nobody was dying; his father was relatively fine. He wasn't even upset, really, he was more... restless. Like there was something in the back of his mind that just wouldn't settle. Maybe it was because he spent his evening at a hospital. Yamaguchi never really liked hospitals.

Sometime around 3:30am he'd moved from his desk to his bed. He didn't bother to change into his pajamas; he wasn't that tired yet. But he was pretty sick of sitting in his desk chair. He opened the balcony door that stretched out above his driveway and let the cool wet breeze from the recent rain release some of the stuffy air in his bedroom. Maybe some cool air would help settle his head. He hoped it would rain again soon. Feeling the rain mist inside from the balcony was one of Yamaguchi's favorite things to fall asleep to.

His mother interrupted his thoughts at around 4am. Upon hearing a soft tread on the hardwood floor outside his door, Yamaguchi looked up from his open facebook app to see his half-asleep mother in her pink fluffy robe leaning against his door frame.

"Oh good, you're awake. I just got a call from your coach. He said he's having an emergency meeting at the gym and he wants everyone on the team to be there, so you should probably throw your shoes on and head over to the school."

"Emergency meeting? Did he say what it was for?"

"No, but he did stress that something very serious had happened, and that he didn't feel it was proper to disclose it over the phone."

"Okay. Just give me a minute."

"You need a ride?"

"No, it's not a far walk. I should be okay."

"Great. I'm going back to bed. Love you."

"Goodnight, mom." With that she was gone.

Emergency meeting? It had to be something serious. Coach Ukai never called any sort of meetings late at night. It was a miracle they had even gotten him to agree to the 9pm practice. He loved sleep far too much to willingly interrupt it with a meeting. As he put his phone, wallet, and house keys into the pocket of his shorts and walked out the door, Yamaguchi continued to ponder the motive behind coach's meeting - all the way to the school.


	12. Chapter 12

Yamaguchi was struck with a weird sense of deja vu walking into the boys' gym for the second time in one night. It was like some sort of altered reality, a dream that felt just off balance enough that he could tell something wasn't quite normal - and it only took him one glance around the gym to figure out why.

The rest of the team, though most of them were trying not to express it outwardly, was tremendously agitated. Even Kiyoko and Yachi sat on the bench by the wall, gossiping discreetly, every so often glancing nervously at the rest of the team, who were seated near the center of the gym.

_Wait_. Yamaguchi interrupted his own thoughts as he impatiently scanned his team. _I'm not the last one to show up. Tsukki isn't here yet_. Tsukki may never be early to team meetings, but he was never late, either. Even Nishinoya, who usually was late, was twenty feet in front of him talking Asahi's ear off. Hinata sat wide-eyed, looking around the gym while Kageyama waited beside the tiny spiker with his teeth clenched and his eyes focused straight ahead. Daichi was the only one who looked even close to calm as he sat behind everyone else, probably to make sure the team behaved as coach delivered his emergency message. Even Ennoshita, Kinoshita, and Narita were there, sitting in a small triangle talking quietly among themselves, their strained voices barely audible over Nishinoya's nervous babbling.

As Yamaguchi crossed the gym to sit with his team, he followed the unsettled glances towards the front of the group, where Coach Ukai and Sugawara sat waiting for everyone to gather. Yamaguchi's first reaction to seeing Sugawara sitting with the coach was shock. He couldn't have been more surprised if someone had thrown a full bucket of ice water in his face - Sugawara looked terrible. His face was haggard and pale, purple bruises hung under bloodshot eyes, and both of his hands were bandaged - Yamaguchi could clearly tell he not only hadn't slept, but had been crying terribly. Whatever coach's emergency was, it obviously had something to do with Sugawara.

As Yamaguchi approached the team, Daichi stood to greet him. Placing a hand lightly on his shoulder, he made easy conversation.

"Hey, Yamaguchi. How's your dad?" Yamaguchi mustered up the courage to give the captain a half smile.

"He's okay. The stroke didn't appear to do a whole lot of damage, but they're keeping him overnight for monitoring just to be sure."

"That's good. Give him my regards." Daichi gave his teammate an encouraging smile and sat back down in his place. Yamaguchi watched as Daichi's expression morphed from comforting to deeply concerned as he shifted his gaze to Sugawara. Following Daichi's apparent train of thought, he wondered what kind of emergency could warrant not only such extreme emotion from Sugawara, but would also cause coach to call a team meeting in the middle of the night. Yamaguchi pondered the situation as he sat down alongside Daichi. Just then, Ukai stood to speak.

"I want to begin by apologizing to all of you for calling you here so late, eh - early. You all know me, and you know I would never call a meeting like this unless it's absolutely necessary."

Yamaguchi whipped his head frantically around the gym, looking desperately for his closest friend. There was no way he could have missed him. He's the tallest person on the team, and, not to mention, the only one with bright blond hair. Yamaguchi could pick Tsukki out of a crowd without a problem. So then if he wasn't here, where was he?

"Normally, I would have waited for practice tomorrow to give you all any sort of important news, but this is a time-sensitive matter, so..."

Why would coach start such an important meeting without Tsukki? There's no way he would start without counting heads and making sure everyone was here, so there's no conceivable way he could miss Tsukki on accident.

"Sugawara made a promise that he would do this next part himself, so at this point I'm going to turn you over to him."

Yamaguchi's mind was reeling. Coach had to call everyone's parents to let them know to be here, right? So maybe Tsukki's mom just told coach he wouldn't be able to be here. _Except Mrs. Tsukishima would never do that. His dad might, but not his mom. She's too much of a free spirit to restrain him like that in an emergency_. Despite how much he tried to convince himself that his best friend was simply at home asleep, the guilty and traumatized look in Sugawara's terrified eyes fueled the nagging flame in the back of his mind that told him he wasn't.

Sugawara then stood and approached the team.

He inhaled sharply, feeling the same tingling in the center of his chest that he usually associated with being out of breath. Explaining himself to the team was going to be much harder than he'd imagined, much harder than talking to Tsukishima's family. Tsukishima's mom and brother were incredibly understanding, there were only two of them, and they were strangers. His team, though... These people were his closest friends. They were his whole world, and if they judged him harshly for what he'd done, he would be forced to either live with it or give up both volleyball and all the people he cared about. It was a huge risk, one he knew he didn't want to take. But it had to be done. Just like Tsukishima's family, they deserved to know. Besides, it wasn't like he could back out now.

"I, uh... I want to begin this by apologizing. What happened is my fault. So... I'm sorry. I'm sorry that what I'm about to tell you will change the team. So before you all hate me... Let me apologize for ruining everything."

"Suga, what are you talking about?"

The tense, paternal voice was Daichi's. Sugawara refused to look him in the eye, afraid of the judgement he would find staring back at him.

For the umpteenth time tonight, Sugawara could feel the familiar pressure just behind his eyes that signaled the oncoming wave of tears. Never in his life had he ever been so sick of crying. He didn't even have the strength to fight it. It was as if he just trusted that he was empty enough that a few more tears wouldn't matter. He let them flow without resistance.

Swallowing his fear, he looked Daichi in the eye. When he spoke, it was with the smallness of a child.

"Daichi... I really screwed up this time..." Daichi's eyes softened as he replied.

"Suga, it's okay. Just tell us what happened."

By this point, he had the entire team's focus. He could feel fourteen pairs of eyes staring him down, each with the potency of a laser. Every team member, Kiyoko and Yachi, even Takeda-sensei was concerned. He tried to give the impression he was looking at all of them, but in reality he was staring past them, avoiding looking anyone in the eye except Daichi. He especially avoided Yamaguchi. When he spoke, his voice quivered.

"... Tsukishima's in the hospital."

Sugawara held his breath as he watched the team absorb what he'd just told them. Losing his nerve, he closed his eyes and let the tears roll down his cheeks. If his team was going to react, he didn't want to see it. He didn't want to watch them judge him. He didn't want to watch the heartbreak he'd caused. The room sat in unbearable silence for several seconds before Daichi spoke up again. He spoke slowly and deliberately, like a parent having a heart-to-heart with a crying child.

"Why is Tsukishima in the hospital, Suga? ... Please. He's our friend. We need to know."

"Well, after Yamaguchi left practice to go be with his dad, I realized Tsukishima was going to walk home alone, and I offered to walk with him. We stopped at a convenience store not far from my house on the way home, and while we were inside, someone tried to rob the place... w-with a gun. We tried to hide behind some shelves... We hoped he would just take the money and leave, but... but when he started yelling I, uh... I panicked. Tsukishima tried to calm me down, but I just - I couldn't... The robber heard us... and I was terrified... I ran for the door."

Sugawara paused to take a small peek at his team, nobody seemed to be judging him yet, he figured, they all seemed to be wearing expressions of surprise. Except for Daichi, who seemed to be forcing his emotions from his face.

"Guys... you have to understand... I - I didn't mean to put Tsukishima's life in danger like that. I don't even remember deciding to run. I just... ran. I think I startled Tsukishima, because he tried to run after me. He... he was only trying to keep me safe. The robber... the robber turned his gun on us. By the time he'd probably registered what was going on he'd missed me. But... he'd recovered quickly enough to... to shoot Tsukishima."

Sugawara watched his teammates' expressions morph from surprised to horrified.

"I never even saw what happened - Tsukishima was behind me. I didn't even realize what I'd done until I heard the gun go off. I heard a loud sharp sound, followed by the sound of him hitting the floor... It wasn't until then that I realized... that I realized my stupidity had probably just gotten my teammate killed... After the guy left the store, the cashier and I ran back to where... to where he was shot... I - I was frozen. He was covered in blood -"

"That's enough, Sugawara."

Daichi again. Sugawara couldn't read his captain's voice, and it scared him. He closed his eyes again and decided to wait out the resounding silence in darkness. The less he could see his teammates' faces, the less he would have to feel guilty. Except, you know that's a load of crap, Koushi. You're going to feel guilty no matter what. It was like he could hear everyone else thinking, hear them judging him. He stood there, at the front of the gym, eyes closed, tears streaming, fists shaking at his sides. It was like waiting for the end of the world.

"Well, Tsukishima's gonna be okay, right?"

Sugawara opened his eyes again and found Hinata staring straight at him, breaking the leaden silence with his innocence. He'd forgotten how much they'd all come to depend on the team's resident ball of sunshine to get them through the day. If there was anyone he could depend on to be optimistic through all this, it was Hinata. But it was painful, seeing how little he understood about what was going on. Didn't he realize that they could lose Tsukishima literally at any minute?

"Oh, Hinata..." Sugawara muttered, a small squeak in his voice. Before he could say anymore, Kageyama joined in to relieve him of his burden.

"Shut up, dumbass!" he shouted, shoving Hinata over onto the floor, "Can't you see Sugawara's upset?" Hinata sat back up and shoved Kageyama in return.

"Hey, don't call me a dumbass; I was just trying to be polite! I mean, of course Tsukishima's gonna be okay! He's the only one who never complains he's tired after practice, so that means he's in really good shape. Of course this is no problem!"

"Hinata, you're an idiot! Don't you know anything!?"

"Hey!" Daichi shouted in a much more serious voice than Sugawara was used to hearing from Daichi, even when he scolded them, "You two are going to shut up right now, or I'm locking you out of the gym until you've calmed down. This is not the time to fight about this, especially in front of Sugawara and Yamaguchi."

Yamaguchi. Everyone in the room turned to look at Yamaguchi. He hadn't moved since Sugawara delivered the news. Tanaka gave a quick "hey," to get his attention, Nishinoya scooted closer to him, reached out, and shook his shoulder, but he simply sat staring into the mindless abyss in front of him. His eyes looked almost glassed over, like he'd completely lost touch with reality. He didn't twitch. He didn't blink. He simply stared as Sugawara's guilt piled higher with each passing second.

"Guys, he - he's not okay..." Asahi mumbled, pale and shaking, nearly as freaked out as his teammate. Daichi intervened. He made his way to Yamaguchi and took a knee in front of his blank face. He spoke in a firm voice.

"Yamaguchi." Yamaguchi tipped his head ever so slightly to the side. He spoke in a small terrified voice.

"... Daichi?"

"Yamaguchi. You with us?" Yamaguchi suddenly flew to his feet.

"I-I'm sorry, I need to go." He ran to the club room and slammed the door. Having watched the scene unfold, Ukai ran after him, and Sugawara, having watched the exchange as well, ran to follow.

"I need to go, too."

Daichi jogged to catch up and caught his co-captain by the wrist, stopping him in his tracks.

"No, you don't. You're coming with me. We need to talk. Besides, Yamaguchi needs some alone time." He turned to the rest of the team, gesturing around the room.

"That goes double for the rest of you! Nobody had better bother him until he comes out by his own free will. Let him process this." After that, Daichi led Sugawara outside.

* * *

Daichi closed the gym doors and sat down on the far side at the top of the small set of concrete stairs, his long legs bent slightly, his feet resting on the ground below. Without speaking or turning to look beside him, he patted a spot on the stair next to him. Sugawara swallowed hard and sat down beside his captain. They sat there for a full minute or more: Sugawara unable to take his eyes off Daichi, horrified at how angry his close friend seemed, and Daichi unable to look at Sugawara, terrified that he would lose control of his emotions and say something he would regret. The tense air hung around the pair, stretching the inches between them into miles. Just when Sugawara thought Daichi might never speak to him again, he opened his mouth and spoke deliberately.

"Suga, what's this nonsense about it being your fault?"

"... I talked to Tsukishima's mother right before coming here..." Daichi turned to Sugawara and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"His mother told you it was your fault?"

"No! No, she didn't. Actually, it was sort of the opposite... She forgave me." Daichi didn't really know what to say. To be in the impossible situation Mrs. Tsukishima would be in right now, and be gracious enough to forgive the kid who (although accidentally) put her son's life in danger was an inner strength he was certain he didn't have. After Daichi remained silent, Sugawara tried a different approach.

"Daichi, does the team call me the 'team mom' a lot?"

"That depends on your definition of 'a lot.' They don't say it to your face often, probably because they're afraid it'll embarrass you, but I hear it in the club room or whenever you're out of earshot. So, yeah. I guess they call you 'team mom' a lot. They certainly trust you like one. Why do you ask?"

"... I like it. It's flattering, being the one everyone goes to because they trust you." Daichi shifted so that more of his body faced Sugawara.

"Of course it is. You care about them. You're a responsible person and you feel responsible for them. Because they're younger than you, whether it's physically like the first years, or emotionally like Asahi. Because you feel like you need to protect them. Is that it?" Sugawara look down at the concrete sidewalk at his feet.

"Yeah, I think so."

"If it makes you feel any better, I feel the same way. I need to keep them in line. I need to keep them in my own little protective bubble because if I don't, they might hurt themselves or others, and I couldn't bear to see that happen. And yeah, I love volleyball. But I don't just want them to be the best for me, because I want to win. I want them to be the best for themselves, too."

"Daichi..." Sugawara began without looking up from the ground, "I don't deserve to be the team mom." Daichi sat sideways on the top stair, his right leg folded in front of him, his left stretched out along the stairs. He felt the coarse surface of the concrete bite into his calves as he sat under the full moon.

"Why do you think that? Because you couldn't protect him? Because you couldn't stop it from happening, so that somehow makes you unfit to be the team mom?" Sugawara turned himself so that he was mirroring Daichi. It always dumbfounded him how easily his captain could read him.

"When Mrs. Tsukishima forgave me... I didn't feel forgiven. I felt like an impostor who was only now realizing that's what he was. I saw that all this time of feeling flattered, of being happy the team trusted me... I realized they had no reason to. I don't deserve it. I can't actually protect them from anything, I'm just like them. Scared and vulnerable."

"Suga, you care a lot about Tsukishima as a member of the team and as a friend, but you can't compare yourself to his actual mother." Sugawara looked away from Daichi as tears began to swell in the corners of his eyes.

"Look, Tsukishima has an older brother in college, right? So that makes him, what? Twenty? Twenty-two, maybe? That means this woman is most likely in her late forties to fifties, right? She's lived about half of her life and raised at least two kids. You, on the other hand, are an eighteen-year-old high school student. See the difference? Of course she's better at being his mother than you are - she is his mother, and she's lived decades longer than you have. You don't have the same life experiences. How could you, when you've never even graduated high school?"

"I don't understand how any of this is supposed to make me feel better. You're just telling me that I'm right in feeling inferior."

"No, I'm telling you it's natural that you're feeling inferior. Suga, we're kids. I understand you feel guilty for not being able to stop what happened, and you especially feel guilty for freaking out the way you did, but how could you have helped it? You've never been through anything traumatic like that, right? What you did was your body's natural reaction to the fear you were experiencing. And besides, even if you had been at the top of your game, what could you have done against a loaded gun?" Sugawara turned back around and faced Daichi, tears streaming down his face.

"Daichi, are you angry?" Daichi took a moment to respond.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am. But not at you. I'm angry at fate, I guess. Tsukishima didn't deserve this. Nobody deserves this." More silence.

"Do you think I'm selfish? For comparing myself to Tsukishima's mother?"

"Maybe a little. But we're human. I think in a way, it's natural for us to be selfish." Sugawara lowered his voice to a whisper. He knew what he was going to say next, and he was terrified Daichi would judge him for saying it.

"I hate myself for being like this, Daichi." Daichi looked at Sugawara with an intense and earnest expression.

"Don't. Please, don't hate yourself. In a way, you've defined yourself by your identity as the team mom. Now the one time it counts rolls around, and you fail. Even worse, one of your teammates could die for it. If that happens, then tonight will follow you for the rest of your life. That guilt will eat you alive, and it terrifies you. Suga, your self-image shattered the moment that gun went off. You realize now that the world is a lot bigger and scarier than you first thought it was, and you can't protect the people you love as well as you thought you could. It's normal. We learn. We adapt. We move on."

The wind picked up again as the pair sat in that moment, in silence. The night air, still heavy with moisture, hung on them like gym weights. Sugawara imagined that even lifting his head would feel like a work out. He felt the strong breeze caress his hair, tickling his forehead, and he wondered if he could stay in this moment, free of the outside world, forever.

"How do you know all this?" Daichi gave his friend a gentle smile.

"My mom's a psychologist. I get lectures like this from her a lot." Sugawara scooted closer to Daichi as the two re-positioned themselves so that they were sitting normally again. As he relaxed his legs he felt his knee bump lightly against his captain's.

"Your mom sounds like a wise woman."

"That's one word for it. She's weird by normal standards, though. She's always coming home from work with these little trivia facts. It drives me nuts sometimes." For the first time all night, Sugawara smiled.

"Come on," Daichi said, nudging Sugawara in the shoulder as he stood, "Let's rejoin the rest of the team. See if Yamaguchi's gotten everything out of his system, yet." Sugawara stood, and the pair re-entered the gym.


	13. Chapter 13

The Karasuno boys volleyball team waited anxiously for their teammates to come back from their talk. With Sugawara and Daichi outside, Yamaguchi holed up in the club room, Ukai trying to get through to him near the far side of the gym, and Kiyoko and Yachi hugging each other tightly and crying, the rest of the team felt lost. They were caught between several emotional extremes, between people who had their hands so full handling themselves that they didn't have the ability to guide the rest. How were they supposed to deal with tragedy without the guidance of either their captain or their coach? Left to their own devices, the team talked among themselves.

"Guys, we need to talk about this." Ennoshita finally said after a long silence, looking around at the sullen faces of his teammates, "We can't let it break us. Come on, we're a strong team. We're gonna be okay."

Kageyama was furious. He couldn't explain why, but just hearing how optimistic Ennoshita was made him want to punch something. They were not the same team. One of their starting players was out of commission, how could they ever be ready for nationals now? Kageyama felt like he had been standing in the sunlight, its fulfilling warmth spreading itself over his entire body. He reached for that sun every day - every time he set another ball he extended his reach just another millimeter. Every time he played volleyball, he was that much closer to his dream - to winning nationals and becoming the best. As the news of Tsukishima's injury reached his ears it was like that sun had been blotted out by the moon, his teammate's tragedy clouding over his goals in a solar eclipse.

"We _were_ a strong team."

"Kageyama, what are you talking about? Of course we're still strong!" Hinata countered.

It made him angry. In a way, he thought he might have been angry with Tsukishima. Logic told him that the situation wasn't actually Tsukishima's fault, but it didn't matter. It was his injury that was holding the team back from their collective goal, the goal they'd all been working so hard to obtain. Kageyama hated the fact that Tsukishima seemed to be the only one on the team who didn't care enough to work for that goal, and now he would be the one who would hold them back from it. As much as Kageyama hated the idea, they couldn't win without Tsukishima.

"We can't win without Tsukishima! We don't have anyone else who can read block!"

"That's what you're worried about!? Nationals? Kageyama, this is bigger than Nationals!" Tanaka shouted, using every bit of control he had not to physically confront his teammate on the spot.

"Kageyama, I care about Nationals like everyone else," Narita said, "but we can't change what happened."

Tsukishima might have been a good enough volleyball player to be a starter, but that didn't take away from the fact that the kid was an ass. He had no regard for anyone's feelings, even Yamaguchi's, and bullied Kageyama almost to no end. Tsukishima knew exactly how much his ‘King of the Court’ moniker bothered him, so he purposefully went out of his way to drive the stake further, belittling Kageyama every chance he got. He was constantly calling him and Hinata idiots, and seemed to stand resolute against making any sort of friends on the team whatsoever. This jackass who was a constant burden to anyone he ever talked to, who didn't care about the team or about volleyball, was somehow the key to achieving their ultimate goal.

Why couldn't the rest of the team see that? They didn't have anyone else on the team who could read block as well as Tsukishima could. Nobody else had that intelligence, that attention to detail - talents that Kageyama was reluctant to attribute to someone with as foul an attitude as Tsukishima. There was no way they could train someone else to make up for that difference in the short amount of time they had between now and Nationals.

"We can't control what happens with Tsukishima! We can control Nationals. We need to have a plan or we're sunk!"

"I get you and Tsukishima never got along, but where the hell is this coming from?" Nishinoya shouted, getting to his feet and pinning Kageyama by the collar. Kageyama took Nishinoya's hands and tore them away from his shirt.

"We're gonna lose the dream we've all been working for! How could you not care about that!?"

Still... he didn't think he hated Tsukishima, not completely anyway. Sure, the blocker's attitude toward volleyball and other people infuriated him, but Kageyama never wanted him dead. He struggled often with the idea that in order for the team to be the best it could be - to be ready for Nationals - he and Tsukishima needed to get along. After wrestling with the idea for weeks, he'd figured that Tsukishima's business was his business alone, and that he needed to just focus on his volleyball skill.

And it sort of worked. Kageyama treated him like any other player, and once Tsukishima had his moment, once he blocked Ushijima and showed some semblance of excitement for the first time, they began to tolerate each other. Sure, they still didn't work very well together; Tsukishima didn't spike very often, and Kageyama had never trained to match him, but once when he swallowed his pride and followed Tsukishima's lead when blocking a spike... it worked. It was hard for Kageyama to really wrap his head around, but after that moment in the Shiratorizawa game, Tsukishima didn't seem quite as hostile. It made it that much worse that they wouldn't have him for Nationals.

The pain of losing his chance at Nationals weighed heavily on Kageyama's mind, clouding his judgement. Volleyball was all he ever wanted. It was the only thing that got him out of bed in the morning, the only thing that could convince him to go to sleep at night. He ate, slept, and breathed volleyball. It was his life. His mind struggled with who he should blame for his lost chance. Intellectually, he knew that the blame should be put on no one other than the shooter himself, because it was his poor decision that led to Kageyama's present situation. However, his heart wouldn't accept an answer like that. Like a ravenous beast, it demanded emotional compensation. Like a wounded animal, it lashed out, uncaring of who it destroyed in the process. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Kageyama realized he was being very selfish.

"So what, you wanted Sugawara to get shot instead!?" Nishinoya shot back.

"Tsukishima's a starter! We - "

Kageyama stopped talking when he saw his teammates' stupefied faces surrounding him. He didn't even have time to process what their expressions meant before he heard the unmistakable voice of Coach Ukai crossing the gym, probably to scold them for being so loud - or so he thought.

"Kageyama!"

Coach sounded furious. He wasn't 'Kageyama and Nishinoya were too loud again' angry, he was 'Kageyama has done something very unforgivable' angry. It was in seeing his coach's face that the fear started to set in.

"Coach?"

"Tell me I didn't just hear you say Tsukishima's life is worth more than Sugawara's because he's a starter."

No. The correct answer to Nishinoya's question was no. It was in that moment that his mind was flooded with realization. He never wanted anyone dead! He had been so focused on his anger over Nationals that he hadn't stopped to think before he spoke. Again.

"Coach, I - "

"I'm kicking you off my team. Leave my gym."

Off... the team? The world shattered before Kageyama's eyes. For a moment, he could almost feel his heart stop cold in his chest. His coach's words didn't register in his mind as a cohesive thought until seconds after he said them. In his peripheral vision, Kageyama could see the rest of his team display a myriad of emotions, all ranging from reluctantly justified to absolutely horrified. Once his mind registered his coach's words he fell into a blind panic. He couldn't lose volleyball! Volleyball meant everything to him!

"Coach, no, please! I didn't mean it like that!"

Ukai took a long hard look at the teenager standing in front of him. Kageyama had a history of not being able to communicate his emotions and speaking before thinking, but he didn't think even Kageyama would take it this far. Still, he never took the impulsive teen as the type to actively wish harm on his teammates. He thought for a minute about what sort of punishment he could inflict. Kageyama's anger tended to be very physical, so he needed a physical punishment to get him to let out his negativity. Letting his own anger settle from a boil to a dull simmer, Ukai shut his eyes and sighed.

"Fine. Come with me."

Opening his eyes again, he led Kageyama to the back of the gym, to a door to an old storage closet. He took out a set of keys and unlocked said closet, revealing a plethora of old gym equipment that looked like it had seen better days. With a sharp grunt, Ukai dragged an old pull-up bar from the refuse. He turned to Kageyama.

"Go. Until I say stop. Or until you puke. I don't care which." Kageyama swallowed hard, reached up, and grabbed the bar.

* * *

Yamaguchi couldn't stop crying. He felt like he was floating, drowning, lost at sea without a raft. Everything in his mind seemed to be tumbling out of control - it was like trying to play 'don't let the balloon touch the floor' in an avalanche. His tears flooded his face as he struggled to breathe through them. He was glad there was nobody in the club room to try to console him, because he was certain he couldn't talk to them anyway. He was crying so vehemently that he found himself hiccuping, unable to catch his breath.

After storming from the team meeting, Yamaguchi threw the door closed behind him, not caring how loud the resulting slam would be. He was hardly inside the room before he collapsed onto the mat underneath his feet. He hadn't been there for very long before he heard Coach Ukai's voice from the other side of the door, presumably because he'd followed him. He appreciated the coach's concern, but the last thing he wanted was another person to see him broken like this. As politely as he could, he told his coach to leave him alone.

Ukai wasn't about to give up easily, though. He'd continued to insist that he help Yamaguchi in some way, that is before some business with the team dragged him away from his post in front of the club room door. Yamaguchi didn't care what it was. He was just glad he was alone.

Once his thoughts began to settle in his head again, he started to shake, huddled over himself, the mat's texture pressing into the skin on his bare arms. His breathing was sharp and quick. He tried to voice his thoughts, to somehow release the shock and grief pent up inside him, but he couldn't seem to get the words out.

"Tsukki is..." he gasped, "T-Tsukki is..."

_Tsukki is dying_ , he finished in his thoughts. _Tsukki. His Tsukki_. The club room blurred into black as fear overtook his vision. He screwed his eyes shut and blindly reached out beside him, looking for anything he could fit in his hands. He quickly found an abandoned sweatshirt on a lower shelf and pulled it toward himself, squeezing it in his grip, a futile attempt to release the emotional tension that fueled his tremors.

_You could lose him_ , a tiny whispering voice in his head told him. _He could die. You could lose him._

What would he do if he lost Tsukki? Sure, he was friends with the rest of the team, at least on a casual basis, but none of them knew him like Tsukki did. Tsukki was his closest friend. He'd saved Yamaguchi time and time again - whether it was from bullies or his own inner demons, Tsukki always knew exactly what to say to make Yamaguchi feel better, even if it sounded harsh and critical to the others. Tsukki was his rock, the pillar that kept him stable. If Yamaguchi lost him, his life would lose meaning.

The thought that he'd have to brave the world on his own, without Tsukki's constancy and strength, terrified him. As his fear surged he lifted himself from the floor and threw the sweatshirt across the room. It hit the floor with a less-than-satisfying _fwump_. He needed something else to release the tension. Something heavier. He looked quickly around the room and spotted a large cardboard box a shelf higher than the one where he found the sweatshirt. Without thinking, he grabbed its edges and pulled it onto the floor, spilling a mountain of stainless steel water bottles with a loud crash, yelling as he did so. Then, suddenly drained of energy, he fell to the floor, sobbing once again into the mat under his feet.

* * *

When Sugawara and Daichi returned to the gym after their talk outside, the first thing they noticed was Kageyama doing pull-ups near the far wall. Ukai stood beside the bar, looking on with the angriest expression either had ever seen his coach make, and Kageyama looked like he was wearing out fast. Sweat covered his forehead and dripped from his brow as he continuously pulled himself up to the bar. Sugawara and Daichi watched as the muscles in Kageyama's neck and arms strained as he struggled to pull himself up each time.

"Coach looks furious. I wonder what Kageyama did." Sugawara wondered aloud as he and Daichi stood by the gym's entrance.

"Who knows? It had to have been pretty bad for coach to make him do pull-ups in the middle of the night like this." Daichi replied.

Almost immediately after Daichi had spoken, Kageyama lost his grip on the pull-up bar. He collapsed, hitting the wooden floor with a muffled thud. He tried to push himself onto his hands and knees, but his arms wobbled and he fell forward. Ukai, still scowling, took a few steps closer to Kageyama, reached out, and seized his arm. With Ukai's help, Kageyama got to his feet. Sugawara and Daichi could barely make out their coach's voice as he scolded their teammate.

"I don't think I need to ask if you've learned your lesson."

Kageyama was too exhausted to properly vocalize his answer. His arms felt like jelly, and he was breathing hard. Ukai released Kageyama's arm as he lowered himself into a deep bow of apology to make up for his lack of voice.

"...Good. Go back to the team."

However, before Kageyama could move they heard a loud crash come from the club room. As worried expressions rippled through the gym, everyone rushed to see Yamaguchi.

* * *

Sugawara reached the club room door first. He opened the door to find Yamaguchi sobbing on the floor surrounded by an overturned cardboard box and thirty or so water bottles.

"Yamaguchi..."

Yamaguchi sat up and turned to the doorway at the sound of his teammate's voice. Sugawara stared silently at Yamaguchi's disheveled appearance, feeling a strange mixture of horrified and guilty. It never ceased to baffle and sadden him to see how his own failures could cause the people around him such pain. Yamaguchi's eyes were moist and bloodshot, his hair a mess. For a fraction of a second, Sugawara could see a sort of detachment in Yamaguchi's face, an emptiness, as if by crying he had bled himself dry. However, he watched as his friend slowly came into realization. He watched Yamaguchi's blank expression evolve into one of furious recognition. He pushed himself to his feet and rushed Sugawara, taking him by the collar of his shirt and swinging him into a shelf. The shelf fell against the wall, knocking several objects onto the floor with a loud crash.

"You did this! This is your fault!" Yamaguchi screamed as he stared into Sugawara's fear-filled eyes.

"Yamaguchi, I - "

"Why didn't you protect him!?" the furious teen shouted as he shook Sugawara savagely by his shirt, "I'd have risked my life to make sure he was safe! Why didn't you? Don't you care!?"

By this point the rest of the team had caught up to the doorway, watching wide-eyed and terrified as one of the meekest players on their team snapped at their vice-captain. Daichi soon pushed his way to the front of the team, and entered the club room after the arguing pair. Storming in through the door, the captain grabbed Yamaguchi by the back of his shirt and yanked him away from Sugawara. Tanaka pushed through as well and helped Daichi by prying Yamaguchi's hands from Sugawara's collar.

"Hey, dude, calm down!" Tanaka shouted as he tried to wrench his vice captain free from the pinch server's grip.

"Yamaguchi, stop!" Daichi bellowed, spinning the first year around so that they were facing each other, and locked his gaze with his teammate's, "This is not Sugawara's fault, and you know it!"

If Yamaguchi heard, he gave no indication. Without acknowledging Daichi's comment, he shouted and spun himself back around, lunging again for Sugawara and very nearly tearing himself from Daichi's grip in the process. Upon seeing his captain almost lose his hold on Yamaguchi, Tanaka joined in holding him back.

"Yamaguchi, get a hold of yourself!"

Yamaguchi wrestled his right arm free of Tanaka and Daichi's grip and reached for one of the steel water bottles at his feet. Taking it into his hand he launched it at Sugawara's face with all his strength. The bottle landed a direct hit, square into Sugawara's nose before clattering onto the floor. Sugawara's hands flew to his face as Asahi and Nishinoya pushed through the group to make sure he was okay.

As soon as the bottle left Yamaguchi's hand, Daichi, in a burst of strength, took the front of Yamaguchi's shirt in both his hands and shoved him against the wall near the door. The first year's head hit the wall with a loud thud, sending him into a daze.

"I said stop." Daichi whispered, completely deadpan. He turned his attention to Tanaka.

"Hold him."

Daichi crossed the room to the shelf on the opposite wall. He took a volleyball from a wire bin in the corner of the room and returned to Yamaguchi, shoving the ball into his teammate's stomach.

"Come on."

He turned toward the door. Yamaguchi, who had somewhat recovered himself, called after him.

"... What are we doing?" He asked, still in a bit of a daze. Daichi stopped at the door. He spoke without looking back.

"The one thing that brings us together. We're playing volleyball." Daichi left the club room, leaving the rest of the gym speechless.

* * *

The game was atrocious. It lasted less than a half an hour, and no one played even close to their full potential. Kageyama was exhausted, throwing his and Hinata's quick out of sync. Tsukishima wasn't there to coordinate the blockers, so nobody on the front line could get their timing right to block any of Karasuno's stronger spikers. Asahi was more of an emotional wreck than usual, and only made a handful of balls over the net the whole game. Yamaguchi stepped in to pinch serve once or twice, and had to be coaxed into actually serving the ball, his anguish over Tsukishima's situation throwing his entire mental state off balance. Sugawara couldn't even join the game until ten minutes after it started. Yamaguchi's stunt with the water bottle had given the setter a bloody nose, and it took him several minutes until it stopped bleeding and Takeda-sensei cleared him to play. Even then, he was too exhausted and emotionally spent to play well. He couldn't time his sets properly, and missed the ball more often than not.

The game dragged on, and both sides became increasingly more frustrated. Neither side played nearly as well as they had in the game against Shiratorizawa, and the idea that they had taken so many steps backward infuriated them. It was clear to everyone on the court that the team was about to break. Most of them looked to be moments away from snapping at their teammates - even Hinata stomped off in the other direction each time he missed one of Kageyama's tosses. It took all Nishinoya had in him to keep from simply turning around and yelling at someone every time he missed a receive. Tsukishima's accident and its aftermath had gone off like a bomb in Karasuno's faces, leaving a massive amount of collateral damage in its wake.

Finally, near the end of the game, Hinata made a spike. It wasn't a ground-breaking one, but the timing was right, the follow-through was smooth, and for that one moment, his and Kageyama's timing synced up.

"H-hey! Kageyama, we did it!" Kageyama scoffed and turned away from him, his face turning red.

"O-Of course we did, dumbass."

For a moment Hinata simply stared at the setter, a wide, bright smile on his face. Then, after a couple seconds, he began to laugh. Kageyama turned to his friend, his face going from shy to angry.

"W-what are you doing, Hinata!?"

But Hinata didn't answer. Slowly, the rest of the team began to laugh with them. Even Kiyoko, Yachi, and Takeda had started to giggle. After laughing joyously for a solid five minutes, they began to play once more. They played much better this time. Granted, it was still approaching five in the morning and they were still exhausted, but Hinata's moment of exuberance had reconnected them - they were a team again.

The last few minutes of the game went on in that manner, with the team slowly picking up the pieces, and putting themselves back together. As bone-tired as they were, the Karasuno players began to meld again, letting Hinata's innocence pervade them and bring them closer together. However, it was a game they would never finish. Just as they had gotten the hang of playing as a team again, Ukai's cell phone rang.

Everyone on the court stopped cold when they heard the high-pitched tone. The ball hit the floor and bounced around the gym, slowly coming to a stop in a corner near the equipment closet. The team watched intently as Ukai fished the phone from his pocket and answered it.

"Amaya? What's - "

"Ukai, thank god you picked up. I called my husband four times and he never answered and - "

"Woah, woah, woah! Amaya, calm down. What happened?"

Amaya was hysterical. She was crying and sniveling, barely coherent. Ukai feared the worst, and found himself totally unprepared for what Amaya was about to tell him.

"He's dead, Ukai! My little baby's dead!"


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all!
> 
> Again, thank-you so much for taking time out of your day to read this story. It really does mean a lot to me :)
> 
> Just as a Trigger Warning, this chapter does mention suicide, so if that makes you uncomfortable, read with caution. Thanks, and enjoy chapter fourteen!

Those were the last words Ukai wanted to hear. He had harbored the thought most of the night. Ever since Sugawara called him with the devastating news almost three hours ago, the coach had a thought whispering in the back of his mind, warning him that this was a scenario he may have to deal with. It was on the news almost constantly: school shootings, bank robberies. Gunshot wounds killed people all the time. And so often, the people they killed were teenagers, young kids who hadn't gotten to live their lives yet. Despite the expectation, Ukai still found himself reeling. He was completely unprepared for news of Tsukishima's death.

Hearing the anguish in Amaya's voice was like a punch to the gut; it knocked the air from his lungs and crippled him from the inside. Listening to a mother grieving the death of her son left him with a hollow emptiness deep in the pit of his stomach. Thoughts and memories of coaching Tsukishima flooded his mind, and Ukai actively suppressed them, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand: comforting Amaya, and avoiding getting lost in his own emotions.

"Amaya," he began, picking his words carefully, trying not to think about the fact that his team could probably hear him, "You need to calm down, and tell me what they told you, alright? Tsukishima was very badly hurt. We knew this could happen." Amaya paused, overcome with a sudden confusion.

"Huh? What are you - No... Ukai," she replied, still sniveling, "I haven't heard anything about Kei."

"What do you mean?"

"Ukai... It's Akiteru..."

_Akiteru!?_ Akiteru was fine when he and Sugawara left the hospital. He hadn't shown any signs of even being ill before they left.

_But wait... earlier..._ He'd noticed that something was off about Akiteru... If only he could remember what it was...

... He yawned! That was it! Akiteru was tired! He'd mentioned earlier that he'd fallen asleep in the police cruiser, and Ukai remembered thinking it was odd that he'd fallen asleep so soon after being so high-strung. He didn't know very much about the intricacies of the human body, but he was pretty sure that no matter how tired a person was, there was no way they'd be calm enough to fall asleep on the way to the hospital to see such a close loved one in such a critical condition. Especially if they'd just been unable to sit still less than five minutes prior. There was always an adrenaline crash, but never that fast.

Akiteru was pretty defensive about it when he brought it up, too. At the time, he figured Akiteru was probably just mentally and emotionally exhausted from everything he'd been through, and once he'd gotten in the cruiser he hit his breaking point. But now with Amaya's phone call... he knew something else was going on. The most likely culprit for putting someone to sleep like that... _Shit._

"You're at the hospital, right? Stay there, I'll be right over."

Ukai hung up before Amaya could answer and stuffed his cell back into his pocket. Ukai turned around to leave the gym, and stopped when he saw the terrified and expectant faces of his team. Frozen on the court, the Karasuno boys hadn't moved since their coach's phone went off, anticipating the worst. Takeda put his hand on Ukai's shoulder, breaking the heavy silence.

"What's going on? Is there news about Tsukishima?" He asked with a note of urgency. Ukai looked at Takeda, and then looked around at the faces of his team. He knew he had to tell them something - he couldn't leave them completely in the dark - but he didn't want to put more on their plates than he had already. He already called all their parents and dragged them to the school at 4am - though it was now quickly approaching 5 - to tell them that their teammate had been injured and was barely alive. Ukai knew that if he didn't tell them _something_ , they would undoubtedly spend the rest of the night (or rather, morning, at this point) thinking their friend had died, and that Ukai was too afraid to say so until he and the other adults figured out all the messy details. If he did tell them about Akiteru, then that would put even more stress on them, giving them someone else to worry about, especially since Ukai didn't even know all the details himself, yet. He was particularly worried about Yamaguchi, who was probably the only one of the group who knew Akiteru personally. Yamaguchi was already devastated by the news concerning Tsukishima. The last thing he wanted to do was give the poor kid another close friend to worry about losing.

He had to tell them something, though. It's not like they were toddlers (though some of them often acted that way); they were teenagers. They were old enough to understand what was happening, and it wasn't fair to keep them in the dark about such a serious turn of events. As much as it pained him to do it, he decided to tell the team about Akiteru. Breaking contact with Takeda, he turned to address the entire room.

"No, there isn't any news about Tsukishima, but that phone call was his mother. Something... happened... to his older brother, Akiteru. I don't know much else right now, but I'm going back to the hospital to see her." Uncomfortable and unable to really say anything else, Ukai turned to walk out of the gym, before he was stopped by Sugawara, who had practically materialized right in front of him.

"Let me come with you."

"Sugawara, you've been through a lot. You should really go home and get some sleep."

"Please. I need to see this through." Ukai sighed.

"It's not about Tsukishima. This isn't related to anything you did."

"I know, but... I just... I need..." He sighed, took a breath, and tried again, "I set off a bomb. I need to make sure Akiteru isn't collateral."

It took Ukai a moment to register what Sugawara was saying. He knew that Akiteru was visibly upset, especially when he found out that his brother had been conscious throughout his ordeal. Sugawara obviously felt guilty about the whole incident, and it probably didn't help that he had to deliver the news since he was directly involved in the incident. He had watched Akiteru respond to something that he already thinks is his fault. _He thinks... oh, god... He thinks that Akiteru killed himself._

"Sugawara," Ukai said in a low voice, so that the others, especially Yamaguchi, couldn't hear him, "I'm sure that isn't what happened."

_Except you aren't sure._ Amaya just called saying that Akiteru was dead. If he was correct about his hunch as to why Akiteru had suddenly gotten so tired earlier, then Sugawara's fears could very well be exactly what happened. _Shit... I can't tell him what Amaya said. If he doesn't already need therapy for the rest of his life, he will if... no... when he finds out._

But what else was he going to do about it? If Akiteru really has passed away, then the entire team would find out relatively quickly, anyway. Ultimately he decided there was no sense in keeping the details from Sugawara. He was going to find them out eventually. _Besides, he told himself, You need to figure this out, too._

"Coach - "

"Fine. Come on. We need to hurry." He turned and looked back at his waiting team.

"Sugawara and I are going back to the hospital. Daichi, can you make sure everything gets cleaned and locked up here?" The captain nodded in agreement and Ukai tossed him the keys to the gym. He had one foot out the door when he heard a voice behind him.

"Wait, coach. Bring me along, too."

He turned. It was Yamaguchi.

"Yamaguchi - "

"Coach, Tsukki is my best friend, and I've known Akiteru since I was practically in elementary school. I need to support them. Let me come, too." Well, the more the merrier, Ukai supposed. It wasn't like Yamaguchi hadn't been through enough already. He looked into Yamaguchi's determined eyes and found a strength he didn't realize the first year possessed.

"Alright, come on. But call your mom and let her know where you're going. Sugawara may be eighteen, but you aren't." Yamaguchi silently agreed. The three left as Daichi and the others cleaned the gym behind them.

* * *

Ukai wasn't sure what he expected to see upon walking back into the hospital waiting room. He'd never seen a parent grieve their child before. Would she be crying? Screaming? Would Amaya be shrieking in agony or suffering quietly? Would she keep her pain silent until she was alone or brandish her fury and heartbreak with the frightening lethality of a sharpened sword? He tried not to think too hard about it as he opened the door, Sugawara and Yamaguchi at his side.

What he saw upon entering was a broken woman. For the first time that night, Ukai saw how truly exhausted she was. She was simply sitting in her chair, hands folded in her lap, fidgeting with what looked like her car keys. The fidgeting didn't seem to be helping any, because her entire body was trembling. Her head hung low, her back was hunched over her lap, hiding her face from the world. Ukai couldn't see it, but he could hear what sounded like sniffling coming from her direction. He walked over to her, knelt at her side, and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. She jumped in her chair as she swung her head around to face him.

"Wha - Oh, Ukai. It's you... I'm so sorry I called you back here like this."

_She's definitely been crying_ , Ukai thought as he finally got a look at her face. Her eyes were red and there were clear tear-stained trails cutting lines into her make-up.

"Oh, Koushi," Amaya continued, "And Tadashi, honey, what are you doing here?" Yamaguchi and Sugawara both came up beside her.

"Tsukki is my best friend, and I've known Akiteru forever, of course I wanna be here for them."

"Amaya," Ukai broke in as he sat down beside her, prompting Sugawara and Yamaguchi to follow suit, "You called me saying something about Akiteru. I haven't told the team exactly what you told me, so would you mind explaining what happened?"

Amaya fell silent at Ukai's request. She closed her eyes, and the other three watched as two more trails of tears trickled down her face. When she spoke again, it was hardly above a whisper.

"Of course. I did call you here. You deserve to know." Ukai, Sugawara, and Yamaguchi leaned in as Amaya began to speak.

"This last hour has been the hardest hour of my life..."

* * *

Amaya searched her nightstand drawer for an insurance card she hadn't touched in years. Honestly, Kei was such a healthy and careful boy that she'd never needed it for anything other than filling out forms for school physicals. The worst illness he ever caught was nothing more than a cold - with the exception of the one time he got the stomach flu when he was eight - and although he'd played volleyball since he was in elementary school he never injured himself any worse than a sprained ankle. Amaya had several conversations with her husband late at night about how thankful they were that Kei never needed heavy medical attention. Not only was Amaya grateful that their little boy never had to experience anything like that, but she knew in her heart that even with her husband's generous paycheck, the medical bills for an extended hospital visit would put substantial strain on their budget.

She caught a tear as it trickled down her face as she tried not to think about how all those points of gratitude had turned to fears. She found Kei's insurance card buried under some old envelopes near the bottom of the drawer. Pulling it from the drawer, she stuck it in the side pocket of her purse, and hurried out into the kitchen.

Once inside the kitchen, Amaya spotted her car keys on the counter by the door. Despite having taken a cab to get back to her house, Amaya figured it was probably a better and easier idea to drive back to the hospital. Taking her keys from the counter, she left the house and locked the door behind her.

* * *

The first thing Amaya thought upon walking back into the waiting room that night was that her son had simply fallen asleep. Not only did he work long, early hours that day, but he'd also had a volleyball game and dealt with the insanity of his little brother's injury. Truth be told, he was most likely exhausted. That was why, when Amaya saw Akiteru sleeping in his chair, head tilted back, legs crossed, and arms folded across his stomach, she didn't think anything of it.

Crossing the room, she sat down next to her oldest son. Seeing that he was asleep, she took his arm and shook him gently.

"Honey, I'm back," she cooed. Akiteru didn't respond. She shook him harder.

"Akiteru, baby, you need to wake up now." Nothing. Amaya shook him a third time. As she relaxed her grip, she noticed his head roll to one side in what looked like a fairly uncomfortable position. He didn't wake up to re-position himself.

"Akiteru?" As concern started to set in, Amaya took a deeper look at her son and noticed the first problem: His chest wasn't rising.

As her concern skyrocketed into panic, Amaya held the back of her hand centimeters from his nose and mouth, trying to focus through her emotion on what she was looking for. Nothing. There was nothing there. Akiteru wasn't breathing. She started to scream.

The man and woman, still sitting lazily on the other side of the waiting room, jumped to attentiveness at the sound of her panicked voice. The woman ran to Amaya while the man hurried to the door. He opened it and leaned out, calling for a doctor. Within seconds both a doctor and a nurse hurried into the waiting room to see what was going on.

"What's wrong?" the woman asked as the man waved down some help. Amaya had started bawling again, hardly able to keep her composure as she answered.

"He - he's not breathing." she gasped in between sobs.

It was in that moment the doctor pushed through the two women to check Akiteru. At first, he did exactly as Amaya did less than a minute ago - checked his breathing. Secondly, he took Akiteru's wrist, checking his pulse. He waited a couple seconds before his brows furrowed, then he turned around to his nurse.

"No pulse." He turned to shout out into the hallway, "I need help in here!"

Amaya knelt on the floor next to the doctor, wanting nothing more than to cradle Akiteru in her arms. He pulled Akiteru from the chair, laid him on his back on the floor, and began CPR. As she watched the doctor try to resuscitate her son, she suddenly found the other woman beside her with her arm draped around Amaya's shoulders in an awkward attempt at comfort. As Amaya watched the doctor try again and again to recover Akiteru's pulse, she wept terribly, wondering if tonight was the night she would lose both of her children in one horrendous twist of fate.


	15. Chapter 15

"He performed CPR until the nurse returned with more doctors and equipment. They loaded Akiteru onto a gurney and took him away after that. Seeing him so limp... the doctor pounding on his chest as he just lay there like a rag doll... it would have been easier if they'd just cut my heart out of my body while I was still awake..." Amaya paused, choking back emotion.

"Anyway... the nurse stayed behind and asked me all sorts of questions about whether or not Akiteru had taken anything before he passed out, if he was on any medications, if he had any lasting medical conditions... I told her no." Amaya turned to Ukai, "I've never given him anything, and he tells me about all his doctors' appointments. I would have known if he'd been prescribed anything, right?"

Ukai looked at her with pity. They both knew she was grasping at straws, looking for some sort of justification during the worst night of her life. She and Ukai both knew that Akiteru was a twenty-two-year-old in his final year of college. He wasn't even home for most of the year, and when he was, he was working. Sure, he was close enough to be home every once in a while for Tsukishima's games, but Ukai figured that someone like Akiteru probably only spent holidays and the occasional weekend at home. Besides, while Ukai himself had never been to college, he knew plenty of his high school buddies who had, and they kept him updated on the kinds of things they got into. As much as Ukai hated to admit it, it wasn't a difficult leap from "well-off college kid" to "drugs."

"Amaya, Akiteru's in college. Just because you don't know what he does when he isn't home doesn't mean he doesn't... experiment. But if he did do something to himself that we don't know about, the doctors will find it." Sugawara chimed in.

"Of course, Mrs. Tsukishima. Akiteru will be fine." Ukai turned to look at the two boys, and immediately wished he hadn't. Sugawara looked guilty and worn, clearly strained by the fear he had expressed earlier in the school gym, and it wasn't like Ukai could blame him. Amaya's account fit with the symptoms.

Yamaguchi was a different story. He was trembling, trying everything he could to avoid Amaya's gaze. It was understandable - he'd known the Tsukishima family for years and it was probably agony seeing someone who was like a second mother to him suffer so much. Combine that agony with his concern for both Tsukishima and Akiteru's well-being, and Ukai had a recipe for a laundry list of emotional problems. As Ukai watched Yamaguchi, Amaya seemed to notice him as well.

"Oh, Tadashi, honey, please don't," her voice displayed a patience and gentleness that completely belied her situation. She sniffled a bit as she spoke, and her voice was still weak from tears and exhaustion, "You need to have faith, right? Faith that Kei and Akiteru will be okay. They're strong boys; you know that. They're going to be okay."

Ukai knew that Amaya was saying it more to herself than to Yamaguchi, and he had a feeling that Yamaguchi probably knew that, too. There seemed to be a sort of silent understanding between them, as if somewhere, they both acknowledged that the words they were saying were empty promises meant only for temporary comfort. In the midst of tragedy, the hollow meaning of an empty promise was somehow enough to carry them.

When Yamaguchi finally held Amaya's gaze, he knew it was a mistake. Making eye contact was the key to unleashing the waterworks, and as she tried to comfort him he immediately started to cry. As he did so, Amaya guided him down onto the chair with her and pulled him into her arms. They remained like that for a couple minutes before they were interrupted by the opening of a door. All four of them turned to see a doctor standing in the doorway.

He looked out among the waiting room. For the first time, the group noticed that the man and the woman from earlier seemed to have disappeared.

"Amaya Tsukishima?" he called. Amaya released Yamaguchi and stood nervously from her chair.

"Yes?" Her voice was meek.

"Are you the mother of Akiteru Tsukishima?"

"Y-Yes... I am."

"Could you come with me into the hall, please?" She shakily crossed the room to the doctor without looking at the terrified and expectant faces of her companions behind her.

* * *

The doctor guided her into a secluded section of the hall, far away from the typical hustle and bustle of the busy hospital. The left wall was lined with three or four ottoman-style upholstered stools. The doctor stopped near the stools and gestured to one as Amaya stopped beside him.

"Please, take a seat." Amaya sat down on one of the stools as the doctor sat down next to her. He shifted his positioning, angling himself toward Amaya, and propped himself up on his elbows.

"Mrs. Tsukishima," he began, obviously choosing his words carefully, "My name is Dr. Murakami. I'm the physician in charge of your son Akiteru's care. Has anyone told you what's going on?" Amaya shook her head, only momentarily breaking eye contact.

"No, nothing. Is Akiteru okay?"

"Mrs. Tsukishima... our tests revealed that Akiteru's condition was caused by an overdose on what are called benzodiazepines. Do you know what that means?"

"No." Her voice shook harder the more she tried to answer the doctor. Trying to distract herself from her fear, she once more began to play with her car keys.

"Benzodiazepines are a very potent class of sleeping pills. They aren't typically prescribed anymore because they're dangerous and addictive, but a few doctors will still do so in certain circumstances. Most people assume that sleeping pills are only prescribed as a sleep aid, but they can also be prescribed in smaller doses to treat anxiety, since their primary function is to slow the central nervous system into relaxation. Are you with me so far?"

"Yes... Yes, of course."

"... We found a... high dosage of this drug in your son's bloodstream."

"H-high? How high?" she shouted as she began to panic, "Where is my baby?" The doctor stopped for a moment, hanging his head. When he continued, his voice took on a much more solemn turn.

"Sometimes... if a person takes too many sleeping pills... it'll slow their nervous system to the point that their organs, primarily their heart and lungs, will stop working." Amaya simply sat and stared at the doctor in front of her, barely processing the words he was saying. Realizing he wasn't going to receive a response, Dr. Murakami continued.

"Ma'am, as you know, your son didn't have a pulse when you found him in the waiting room."

"No..."

"We did everything we could to bring him back, but the drug had already completely shut down his nervous system. His heart was too far gone. It wouldn't restart."

"NO!"

"Mrs. Tsukishima, I'm very sorry... but Akiteru died."

"N-No! No, you're lying to me!" The doctor tried to take Amaya's hand in a gesture of comfort, but she stood and pulled it away from his reach, still shouting, "You're lying to me! Where's my little boy? Let me see him! Let me see Akiteru!"

Doctor Murakami stood, seemingly oblivious to the violence of Amaya's outburst and gestured down the hall.

"If you would follow me, Mrs. Tsukishima, I will take you to see your son."

* * *

Dr. Murakami stopped outside a door labeled "Morgue".

Amaya wasn't sure how she even made it this far. She hadn't been able to feel anything except the burning hole in her chest since her time in the hallway with the doctor. Everything outside of her direct line of sight faded away like the scorched edges of an old photograph. Her brain was clearly on autopilot. Her son couldn't be here. This was a morgue. Her son was with the doctors.

"He's right through here." Dr. Murakami said, shattering her silence as he opened the door and entered in front of her.

When Amaya entered the morgue the only sight she saw was a metal table and a body covered in a white sheet laying atop it. She tried to force away the idea that the bodily outline she saw was her son. It wasn't until minutes later that her mind would fill in the rest of the blanks in the room - the sterile tile floor, dozens of shiny metal cabinets, and tables with various sharpened instruments. Right now, she only had eyes for the white sheet and the figure beneath it.

The doctor stayed near the room's entrance as Amaya approached the table, giving her space to mourn. The mortician, who had been previously alerted about Amaya's visit, stood still near the table. When Amaya approached, he very carefully lifted the sheet at Akiteru's head, revealing the young man's lifeless body a little at a time. He stopped at his waist and folded back the sheet. Once he was finished, he silently stepped away and stood with Dr. Murakami. Amaya was now effectively alone with her dead son.

Suddenly her limbs felt like lead, every ounce of her body's weight magnified by ten. It was like being hit in the chest by a linebacker, but Amaya didn't back down. She needed to do this. Akiteru was her little baby boy and he deserved this. He deserved to feel the warmth of his mother's love one last time - even if she knew he could never actually feel it. She hoped that somewhere, her last moments with his earthly shell would reach him. She was caught in this tiny impenetrable bubble, containing nothing more than herself and the body of her son in front of her. The rest of the world ceased to exist more than two feet from her person. It fell away, crumbling into dust. She could see nothing more than the little boy she nursed, unmoving in front of her very eyes.

Amaya observed the pallor of his skin and counted each tiny blue vein in his eyelids. She zoned in on his hair and began to count them, too, taking notice of every individual flaw - each touch of grey, each split end. Amaya imprinted onto her mind every aspect of the child she would never see again. She took his hand and caressed it, squeezed it. For the first time, she felt the chilling cold of his skin, and the reality of his death began to set in.

The time she had left with him had run out. She would no longer wake up to see his smiling face at the breakfast table. She would no longer receive phone calls in the middle of the night before an important exam. She could no longer hold onto the hope that some day, he would throw open the front door with a lovely young woman in his arms and give the announcement that Amaya had always wanted to hear, that he was finally going to give her a grandchild. She also realized - Kei could never forgive him. It was too late.

"Oh, god..."

Amaya was crying before she knew it. It was her sudden realization that her two favorite boys would never make peace that unlocked the final door holding back her tears.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god..." Amaya moaned over and over. She kissed Akiteru's face and hands and stroked his hair, struggling to breathe through the enormous weight crushing her chest.

After a few long minutes, Amaya stopped mumbling. She leaned over Akiteru's face and planted one final kiss on his left cheek, the same place she always kissed him before he left for school in the morning, every morning of his childhood. Having given him the last show of affection he would ever receive from her, Amaya leaned into his ear and, with her voice cracking and tears streaming down her face, whispered her parting words.

"Akiteru... Mommy loves you, baby. I love you so much more than you could ever have known."  
Slowly, Amaya backed away from her son's lifeless form. As much as every cell in her body wailed in protest, she knew in her heart that she couldn't stay in the morgue forever. She would have to swallow her grief and move on. Kei was still here. She knew she couldn't fall apart when she had another son who needed her so very desperately.

When the mortician saw Amaya begin to slowly back away from the table, he silently returned and covered Akiteru once again with the white sheet.

Seeing Akiteru's face disappear behind the sheet became the last straw. Amaya fell to her knees.

She started screaming. Not simply crying. Not yelling. Not even wailing.

_Screaming._

When she had tired herself out, Amaya collapsed onto the floor of the Miyagi General Hospital morgue and trembled. She felt the frigid agony of her grief pierce her very bones, leaving her no room for anything more. She knew she needed to find the strength to stand, to break away from this grief and be the mother that Kei needed in his darkest hour, but that energy, that strength, simply wasn't there. Her spirit was broken.

* * *

Dr. Murakami knew he needed to say something to her. It was his job as a doctor of this hospital to not only deliver the relative the news of their loved one's death, but to help them take it, and Amaya Tsukishima was not taking it well. He'd heard through the grapevine (that is to say, he had an old medical school buddy currently working in emergency trauma) that this same woman had another son currently in trauma surgery after he'd gotten caught in that shooting over at the Family Mart a few hours ago. He couldn't imagine what was going through this woman's head. He'd never had a family himself (and now that he was quickly approaching his fiftieth birthday, he felt that it was too late), but he knew how fierce and protective his sister was over her kids, and picturing his kid sister going through something like that with her little girls was a horror his mind could definitely do without.

The mortician had covered Akiteru's body, took it away, and left to attend to his other duties, leaving Dr. Murakami alone with this grieving mother. But what was he supposed to say? As much as he'd told people of their loved ones' deaths before, he'd never come face-to-face with a woman in this position. How do you tell a woman who's just lost one son that everything will be okay, when an hour from now a separate doctor could come in and tell her that she's just lost another one? Whatever he was going to tell her, he needed to do it fast, because he was still on the clock.

Dr. Murakami approached Amaya as she lay huddled on the floor of the morgue and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She flinched for a quick second, shot up from the floor, and made surprised eye contact with the doctor kneeling beside her.

Now. He needed to say it now. But what would he say? I'm sorry for your loss? Meaningless. I feel your pain? A lie. I'll keep you in my prayers? If she isn't religious, that could turn into a disaster. What if he just gave her some simple reassurance instead? It was the only comfort he felt he could honestly give.

"I just wanted to say, if it helps, that most people who take their own lives with sleeping pills, take the whole bottle - to make sure it works. The amount we found in Akiteru's blood was high, but it wasn't anywhere close to that much. It makes it much more likely that this was an accident, that he just mistimed his doses." He scrutinized Amaya's face as he spoke, watching  
closely for any sign that he was saying the wrong thing. She seemed blank, so he continued.

"Look... I didn't know him, but I'm sure Akiteru was a strong kid. I thought it might help you to know that he didn't do this to himself on purpose."

Without warning, Amaya flung her arms around the doctor's neck and sobbed heavily into his shoulder. Whispering harshly and struggling to breathe through her sorrow, she told him something incredibly personal.

"The last thing I told him... was that I loved him." Dr. Murakami gently lifted Amaya from his shoulder.

"Look, Mrs. Tsukishima, I have to go back and do my job now, but I want you to know that I believe you're going to get through this, okay?" Amaya nodded, sniffling.

"Thank-you." Dr. Murakami left the morgue, and Amaya very soon followed, realizing that the next thing she had to do was break the news to Sugawara, Yamaguchi, Ukai... and her husband.


	16. Chapter 16

Sugawara had never felt more anxious in his life than when he sat waiting for Amaya to return from her talk with the doctor. Despite Ukai's attempts at assuring him how unlikely it was that the worst-case scenario really had come true, he couldn't help the growing nagging feeling in the back of his mind that told him things were exactly as bad as he'd feared.

It had been about ten or fifteen minutes before the door once again opened and the group saw Amaya's return. Of course, nobody expected her to glow, but they never expected quite the level of emptiness they found staring back at them, either. She sauntered over to them without saying a word, looking more like a zombie than a living person. She stopped when she reached the area where they were sitting and sat back down in her chair, as silent as a ghost. They stayed like that, waiting in tension, for several seconds.

Being the only other semi-functional adult in the room, Ukai supposed he'd better get the party started. Stumbling over his words a bit, he got Amaya's attention.

"Uh, Amaya?" She turned to look at Ukai, her eyes showing some semblance of recognition for  
the first time since walking into the waiting area.

"What'd they tell you? About Akiteru?"

As soon as Akiteru's name passed Ukai's lips, Amaya began to cry. It took her several seconds of mumbling, but when she finally did speak, her words were barely audible.

"They said it was sleeping pills... Sleeping pills killed my little baby..."

"W-What are you talking about!?" Yamaguchi broke in, horrified. She turned her focus to Yamaguchi, struggling to keep her meager hold on reality.

"Tadashi... I'm so sorry, honey... Akiteru... He... he didn't make it..."

"What... M-Mrs. Tsukishima... You can't be...You can't be serious..." he whimpered. Sugawara muttered a soft "no" beside him.

"They said... they think it was an accident... he mistimed his doses... I... I never gave him any sleeping pills..." Amaya began to stare off into space again, and Ukai figured he'd better reel her back in before things got any worse.

"Hey, Amaya - "

"I'm sorry," she interrupted, standing from her chair and stalking off toward the hallway in the other direction, "I need to call my husband..." And with that Amaya once more left the group alone.

* * *

Every major hospital had a quiet room - Amaya knew enough about them to know that much. Whether it was a chapel, as was usually the case with most Christian-run hospitals, or simply a plain room with a small setup of folding chairs, every hospital had a place for people to be alone with themselves. Amaya had read stories online about doctors who hated passing by quiet rooms, because seeing someone inside always meant that someone they loved was dead or dying. She'd seen medical dramas on television with scenes that took place in quiet rooms. Some important doctor was always contemplating a mistake they'd made, a patient they'd failed to save, only to have another doctor or some other such person come in and start some deep conversation about the meaning of life. And that was supposed to make it okay that the person died. Except it wasn't okay. It was never okay.

When Amaya found the quiet room, she saw that it resembled a chapel. It was mostly dark, with a few dimmed ceiling lights hanging above, and a long table like an alter stretching across the front wall, covered by a green velvet cloth. Rows of folding chairs filled the middle of the room. There weren't any obvious religious symbols, but what looked like a small stack of books on meditation and life after death on a side table near the door. A definite air of reverence hung about the place, and Amaya could smell what reminded her of an old apple spice scented candle she got as a gift in college, only there weren't any candles lit anywhere in the room. The best thing she noticed was that the entire room was empty.

She took a seat in the back corner of the tiny room by a window, and took her cell phone out of her purse. Hands shaking, she dialed her husband's personal number.

* * *

Yoshirou Tsukishima adjusted his tie in the mirror of his apartment in New York City. He was startlingly attractive for a man quickly approaching sixty - tall, well-built, bright blond hair, a firm brow, dark eyes, and a sturdy jaw. There were wrinkles around his eyes, frown lines in his forehead, and small streaks of grey blending with his vibrant blond, but he was no less formal. Yoshirou Tsukishima looked every part the businessman. After he fixed his tie and brushed the lint from his suit for the third time, he looked over at the digital clock resting on his nightstand. It was just after 4pm, meaning it was about 5am the next morning back home in Japan. His wife Amaya would still be asleep, and so would his two sons, Kei and Akiteru.

It also meant that he had just under two hours before he had to be at Le Coucou to have dinner with his company higher-ups. He didn't know much about the place except that it was expensive, French, and provided its customers with a stunning view of Central Park. He thanked his mother's discipline that he wasn't a picky eater. It was absolutely crucial that he make an excellent impression on his bosses.

He'd spent the last hour and a half memorizing all the statistics for the company's Japanese branch for the last three months, including sales, advertisement costs, and highlights from the annual reports on all his employees. He knew all eyes were going to be on him this evening, and the people from the American headquarters were going to expect him to know every last detail about how the company was managing in Japan. The slightest misstep could get him fired. It was terrifying.

He considered calling Amaya about it anyway, just to have someone to talk to in an effort to calm his nerves, but he suppressed the urge. She was handling the boys and the house alone. She needed her sleep. He guessed he could talk to Akiteru, provided he happened to have an early shift and was therefore awake, but Yoshirou decided against that, too. His eldest son would probably be much more nervous about Yoshirou's job than he was. He'd be more of a hindrance than a help, and that wouldn't do either of them any good. No, he realized he'd just have to suck this up and deal with it. He could call Amaya and the boys after dinner, when they were awake for the day, and tell them all about how it went.

Before he could ponder it anymore, his cell phone rang. He walked over to his nightstand, took his phone from the stained wooden surface, and answered the call.

* * *

Amaya shivered as she waited for her husband to pick up the phone. She knew he'd probably be busy - he was up to his eyes in corporate suits - but after everything that had happened to her tonight, the only person she truly needed to comfort her was the man she married. After what felt like an eternity, he answered the phone.

"Amaya, I was just thinking of calling you. What are you doing awake this early?" Amaya sucked in her breath. She needed to take it slow.

"I never went to sleep."

"Was it the neighbor dog again? You really need to tell them - "

"No, Yoshirou, it wasn't the dog... You need to come back to Japan." Yoshirou almost dropped his phone in surprise.

"In two hours, I'm going to have the most important dinner of my career, I can't just hop on a flight back to Japan on a whim!" Amaya clenched her fists at her husband's comment. An irrational anger raced through her core and into her limbs, setting her entrails on fire. She knew he had no way of knowing what was happening at home. She didn't care.

"Listen! Our family is falling apart, and I can't hold it together by myself! So get your ass back here and be the husband and father you vowed you would be!"

Her words were the verbal equivalent to a slap in the face. Amaya didn't lose her temper. Amaya didn't swear. The last time his wife of thirty years let a curse word fall from her lips was sixteen years ago when her father died suddenly of a heart attack and her mother didn't tell her until after the funeral. To hear that kind of hostility in his wife's voice meant that whatever was wrong was at least on par with her father's death. It made his blood run cold.

"Amaya... What's wrong?" She took in a shaky breath. Here she was, about to ruin her husband's peace with three little words.

"... Akiteru just died."

To say that the floor had disintegrated underneath his feet would be an understatement. There was no conceivable way his wife could be lying to him, and yet it was unreal. It was like a massive bout of vertigo - everything around him was spinning out of control, yet he was standing perfectly still. He felt like he was caught in a hurricane, everything blurring into one solid mass of mind-numbing sorrow.

"Yoshirou? Are you still there?"

Amaya had started crying heavily; he could hear it over the phone. She was sniffling and hiccupping, her voice breaking when she tried to speak. She couldn't cry on command - further proof this nightmare wasn't a cruel joke. When he finally answered Amaya, he spoke evenly.

"... Yes. I'm here. What happened to Akiteru?"

"It was a sleeping pill overdose. The doctors said that usually when someone… when someone tries to…tries to…kill…themselves, they take the whole bottle, so because Akiteru didn't, they think it was an accident."

"Where did he get sleeping pills?"

"I don't know. I never gave him any. Maybe someone at work or at the college did. I found him in the waiting room and I thought he was asleep because it was 4:30 in the morning and he worked early today until I realized... I realized his chest wasn't moving. I checked to see if he was breathing and I couldn't feel anything and I thought, you know, maybe I'm imagining it because my hand's shaking so badly that it's like it has a mind of its own but I wasn't...and then... I just started screaming. There were these two other people in the waiting room with me who realized what was happening and one of them waved down a doctor and they started doing CPR right there on the floor and they took him away and the next thing I know they're telling me there was nothing they could do..."

Amaya had become less and less coherent as her story went on, as her tears almost completely overcame her ability to speak. Yoshirou interrupted her before she could ramble anymore.

"Hold on a minute, what waiting room? Why would Akiteru be in a waiting room in the first place? Why were you in a hospital?"

Amaya braced herself for the second bomb she was going to drop on her husband that night.

"Because... Because Kei's having surgery."

"Amaya," Yoshirou began, keeping a very careful eye on his heartrate, "Why is Kei having surgery? What the hell happened over there?"

Amaya took a careful breath and proceeded to tell her husband about their youngest son's late-night volleyball practice, about how he didn't come home, and about Officer Hashimoto and his devastating news.

"…When I opened the door and saw it was a police officer, all my worst fears came true. He… he told me that there was a robbery at a convenience store not too long ago, and that the situation had escalated to a shooting. Yoshirou… Kei was at that convenience store… he and his friend Sugawara stopped there to grab some sodas after practice…"

"Amaya… "

"Yoshirou… someone put a bullet in our little boy… "

"Amaya, you need to breathe, okay? Breathe."

"Oh, god!" she'd begun screaming, "We've already lost Akiteru! What if… What if Kei doesn't make it either? Yoshirou, they showed him to me! When the doctor came into the waiting room and told me they'd lost Akiteru, he took me to see him... I walked into that room and saw my son… I didn't see the grown man they had laid out on the table… I saw the infant I held in my arms the day he was born… I saw the toddler I taught how to tie his shoes… they let me hold his hand, kiss his face… he was so cold... I kept telling myself that he's just asleep… that we're back at home and he's just a little boy, and all I need to do is kiss his head and whisper that it's time for him to get up for school, and he'll open his eyes and smile at me. I… I'm never going to see him smile again… he's never going to open his eyes again… Yoshirou… I can't do that with Kei, too. They can't expect me to walk into that cold metal room one more fucking time just to see my other pride and joy lifeless on a table! They're my little boys, Yoshirou… They'll always be my little boys…"

"Amaya, we're going to get through this. I promise. I know it's difficult – it's beyond difficult – it's impossible. But I swear to you that we're going to get through this together. Amaya, I love you. I love you more than words could possibly say. And we're going to make it."

"If Kei… if Kei lives… I'm going to have to tell him his brother's dead…"

"Don't think about that now. That's a problem for another day. Just think about taking care of yourself right now. I'm going to call my bosses and catch the very next flight back to Japan I can find, okay? Hang in there. We're going to make it."

Yoshirou hung up the phone. As his energy drained into a pool at his feet, he fumbled his way onto his bed and somehow, through his increasing light-headedness and double vision, managed to dial his boss - the CEO of his company's American headquarters.

"Tsukishima, to what do I owe this pleasure? I trust you're prepared for our dinner tonight?" Yoshirou's breathing hitched.

"Yes, I am, sir, but that's actually what I'm calling about. I hate to do this last minute, but I'm afraid you'll have to cancel my reservation. I can't come to the dinner."

"What's the meaning of this, now? Tsukishima, we took you as a man of character, a strong and upstanding businessman. It certainly won't look good for you to flake on us now."

"I understand, sir, and I'm very sorry, but I just received a call from my wife back in Japan. There's been... a death in our family and she needs me back as soon as I can possibly be there."

"Tsukishima, this is your career we're talking about here - the rest of your life! Send the woman a card, and you can go back after we wrap up the paperwork next week. What do you say?" That was the last straw. Yoshirou had been trying to be kind given that the man on the other end of the line was his boss, and therefore had complete control over whether or not he got to keep his job, but insulting his wife and children was something he absolutely would not stand for. He was going to give him a piece of his mind, no matter how much his better instinct told him not to.

"With all due respect, _sir_ ," he began with a nasty tilt to his voice, "My _son_ just died. I'm going home to be with my wife. If you don't like it, then fire me." Yoshirou hung up the phone. Tossing his phone back onto his nightstand, Yoshirou Tsukishima, every bit the businessman, did something he hadn't done in twenty years. He fell back onto his bed, put his face in his hands, and he cried.


	17. Chapter 17

Yamaguchi looked like a ghost - at least that's what Sugawara thought. He imagined that this was the vision Ukai saw picking him up hours ago - a pale, shaky, and broken kid. Tsukishima was Yamaguchi's closest friend, and he'd known Akiteru far better than anyone else on the team. Sugawara couldn't imagine how much emotional agony was dragging his teammate further back into the depths of his subconscious. He needed to pull Yamaguchi back up, bring him back to the surface so that maybe, at some point tonight, his teammate would breathe. He reached over and patted the first year on the back as he stood from his chair.

"Hey, Yamaguchi. Come on, let's go talk somewhere." Yamaguchi looked up at his teammate with a wide, far-off gaze. He nodded and slowly stood.

"Hey, coach, we're gonna go talk somewhere private." Sugawara told Ukai, who still seemed to be trapped in his own world as well. He hadn't broken eye contact with the door since Amaya left.

"Hm? Yeah, just stay out of trouble." The two boys left the waiting room without another word.

* * *

Sugawara led Yamaguchi around the hospital until he found an environment he thought would be suitably comfortable for both of them. Hospitals had a bad habit of making people nervous, and it made sense why. Terrible, life-changing things happened in hospitals - people got sick and often died, and death had no age bias. It didn't matter if you were a ninety-two-year-old grandmother, a newborn baby, or anywhere in between, you were just as subject to death as the guy in the next room. It was terrifying.

It also probably didn't help that this was actually Yamaguchi's second time in a hospital tonight. Earlier in the evening he'd been here waiting for the doctors to come in to tell him if his dad would be okay. Sugawara couldn't possibly imagine being here for a parent. He found himself in awe of Yamaguchi's inner strength.

Eventually, he found what he was looking for - the waiting room for the pediatric ward. Since it was the children's wing of the hospital, it was designed for children and their parents, which meant that the room was designed to cater to delicate people - like young children. All the walls were brightly colored, with heartwarming pictures of sunshine and lakes and lots of green growing things that all looked like they had been drawn in crayon in a child's coloring book. Crayons and activity books sat scattered around the room, on tables and on the carpet, and toys littered almost every available space. There were puzzles, wooden building blocks, Legos, Hotwheels, Barbie dolls, picture books - anything to keep a child busy. The chairs were vibrantly colored as well, and twice as plush as the ones in the other waiting rooms.

There were a handful of people there waiting, mostly parents waiting for their children, but there were one or two younger kids asleep in baby carriers and strollers. Sugawara led Yamaguchi into the room and sat him down in a secluded corner. Sitting next to him, Sugawara took a stuffed bunny with a cartoon cast on its arm from the floor and placed it smoothly in Yamaguchi's hands. He perked up a little, as if noticing the sudden unfamiliarity of the object he was now holding, and it seemed to ground him a little in reality. Yamaguchi squeezed the rabbit gently; it was so soft and supple that he could touch his fingers together through the fabric. He found a little button sewn underneath the fur in the center of its chest and pressed it. A high-pitched, child-like voice said, "Don't give up! I wuv you!" Starting to cry, Yamaguchi held the bunny tight against his body.

"Yamaguchi," Sugawara began, "Let's talk about this. Is that alright? Can we talk for a little bit?" But Yamaguchi didn't give his teammate the slow nod or quiet "yes" he was expecting.

"Suga..." Yamaguchi muttered seemingly out of nowhere, gaze focused on the floor, "This is all my fault..."

* * *

Ukai wondered how Amaya was doing. She'd left about twenty minutes ago, and hadn't returned. He didn't expect to see her happy and chipper immediately after the death of her son, but with everything she'd been through tonight, he was concerned for her well-being. After staring at the waiting room door and debating internally for several minutes, he decided it was probably in both of their best interest to go find her. He even had an idea of where she'd go.

Ukai slowly pushed open the door to the quiet room and peered around. It didn't take him long to find Amaya; she was the only one there, and she was clutching what looked like a small laminated photograph in her trembling hands and weeping bitterly. He slowly approached her and leaned against the window sill to her right. The latch had been unlocked and opened a small crack, and Ukai could feel the moisture in the night air caress the back of his neck as he stood beside his newfound companion.

"Amaya." She looked up at him.

From his position by the window, he could see the picture she had clutched in her hands. It was an old wallet-sized photo that appeared to be peeling at the edges, even to the point of being completely white and papery in one or two corners. The color was faded a bit near the center, worn away from years of being held. It had been laminated - probably somewhat recently to prevent it from disintegrating any more than it already had. Looking further, Ukai saw why the photo was so precious - It was a photo of Tsukishima and Akiteru as children. Akiteru, who only looked about five or six, was sitting in blue jeans, a sweatshirt, and his stocking feet on the carpet of what looked like a living room, holding a onesie-clad Tsukishima in a bear hug upright between his legs. Tsukishima was teething - the head of a rubber dinosaur his apparent victim. It was the most content look Ukai had ever seen on his player's face, and Akiteru looked like he was having the time of his life - nothing in the world could have made him happier than having his little brother in his arms.

"They're adorable. I've never seen Tsukishima without a scowl on his face." Amaya smiled faintly, as if suddenly remembering something mildly amusing.

"No... I don't suppose you would have... You know, I don't know if anyone ever told you... I don't think Kei would have ever mentioned it in practice... But he and Akiteru haven't gotten along in almost four years."

"Really?" Amaya nodded. She went on to explain the incident that had happened between her two sons all those years ago, about Akiteru's volleyball skill, about Kei's hero-worship of his older brother, and about the lie that shattered their relationship.

"Tadashi tells me that Kei's the only one on the team who doesn't try in practice... That's why. He hasn't been able to put his heart into anything since Akiteru betrayed his trust. And Akiteru has been trying to make it up to him ever since... Now he never will..." Amaya started to cry. Ukai gave her a hard, pitiful stare.

"I never knew... Why are you telling me this? Isn't it Tsukishima's business?"

"Because this picture has gotten me through all of it. Every time they fight, I take this photo out of my wallet and remember a time when they loved each other... when they could be happy together..."

"Amaya..."

"I remember when we first told Akiteru he was getting a little brother. He was so happy, he started jumping up and down. He asked me every every single day for two months if we were going to go get his brother today. He couldn't wait... The night Kei was finally born, I was propped up in my hospital bed holding him for the first time. My husband, Yoshirou, excused himself for a moment and left the room and came back in leading Akiteru by the hand. I'll never forget the look on his face the moment he entered the room. The very first thing he saw was the little baby in my arms and he knew that was his brother... He knew he'd finally gotten his brother."

Amaya's voice shook harder the deeper she got into her story. It was painful for Ukai to listen to in light of the situation, despite how happy the memories were.

"His face lit up like a Christmas tree. He started yelling, 'Daddy, can I hold him? Please, please, can I hold him, daddy?' Yoshirou sat him down on a chair in the corner... He very carefully took Kei from me and placed him in Akiteru's waiting arms. He then leaned into Akiteru's ear and whispered, 'Be very gentle with him, now, he's not a big boy like you are. His name is Kei. Can you say hi to your new brother?' Akiteru brought him up close to his face and said 'Hi, Kei! I'm gonna be the best big brother ever!' Nobody ever believes me when I say this, because babies aren't supposed to do this until they're much older, but in that moment, Kei laughed. Yoshirou insists he was just crying, but I know... it sounded like a laugh. I never saw a more wondrous look spread across that boy's face than when his brother laughed at him for the first time."

Ukai was speechless.

"... I called Yoshirou just before you came in. I told him we lost Akiteru. He said he was going to cancel his business dinner to take the next flight from America back to Japan to be here. Ukai, his superiors were really counting on him to be there, and you know how corporate suits can be. What if he gets fired? If he loses his job we'll never be able to pay for Akiteru's funeral, Kei's medical bills... or... god... Kei's funeral, should we... should we need to."

Ukai moved from his place at the window and sat down in a chair beside Amaya.

"You can't think about that right now. You have to focus on being there for Tsukishima."

"How am I supposed to not think about it? There isn't anyone else in the family we can go to for help..."

"Amaya, you're tired, you're scared, and you're grieving. You've had one hell of a long night, and I'm not going to pretend I know what you're going through. But worrying about tomorrow's problems is not going to help you deal with today. You need to tackle this monster one problem at a time."

"Ukai... if Kei dies tonight... I'll have to bury both of my children. What happens when you've had the funerals, and you've put on a face for all the relatives, and you finally go home and just sit in the silence of your kitchen? Where do you go from there? How am I supposed to wake up the next day knowing that everything I've given the last twenty years of my life to is just gone?"

Ukai stared at Amaya in a long, unbearable silence. He couldn't remember the last time he'd wished he had an answer this badly, feeling every other aspect of his life become swallowed up by this woman's heartache. He hated himself for not having anything he could say to help her. Ukai was not a man prone to self-deprecation. It was an uncomfortable, unfamiliar feeling.

"I'm sorry... I don't know. I don't have that answer. Sometimes... I think we just have to roll with what life throws at us."

Before Amaya could answer, their conversation was broken by the soft opening of the door. Leaning into the doorway was a doctor they didn't recognize.

"Excuse me, are you Mrs. Amaya Tsukishima?"

Amaya's heart leaped into her throat. She had been down this road before, and she hated where it ended. She stood.

"Yes."

"Are you the mother of Kei Tsukishima?"

"Y-Yes."

Here it was - the moment of truth. She stood terrified at what the next words out of the man's mouth would be. Would they give her relief or set fire to her whole world? There was a small part of her that didn't want to find out.

"Your son is out of surgery. He's recovering in the ICU. If you would like to see him, I can take you to his room."

Amaya gasped in surprise, as a shocked yelp escaped from her lips. As she watched the doctor's face, almost in complete disbelief of what he'd said, Amaya Tsukishima could feel the first rays of the early morning sun begin to caress her skin through the open window. It was in feeling the smooth warmth on her bare skin that long forgotten hope began to swell in the center of her chest.

* * *

"Yamaguchi, what are you talking about?" Sugawara asked, completely incredulous, "Mrs. Tsukishima told us it was an accident. Of course this wasn't your fault." But Yamaguchi wasn't having it - he turned toward Sugawara, still clutching the stuffed rabbit.

"No, you don't understand!" he shouted, "If it weren't for me, none of this would have happened! Akiteru would be alive!"

"Okay, calm down," Sugawara said, gently placing his hand on Yamaguchi's shoulder and side-eyeing the other waiting room occupants, "What makes you think this is your fault?" Yamaguchi looked back down at the bunny. He began to pick at its soft fur, rubbing its smooth glass eyes with his fingers. He squeezed it, making it speak one more time - for good measure.

"Because... I knew."

"What do you mean you knew?" Yamaguchi's mouth quivered as he began to tell the story.

"A few months ago, the last time Akiteru was home for break, I slept over at their house. Tsukki and I spent most of the night upstairs in his room playing video games until his mom called us down to dinner. When we got downstairs, we noticed Akiteru hadn't come down yet, and Tsukki's mom asked us to go upstairs to get him. I agreed and went by myself straight to his room, because that's where he usually is, and strangely enough, found it empty."

Sugawara continued to stare intensely at Yamaguchi. He had a feeling he knew where this story was headed.

"After looking around some more and calling his name, I found his bathroom lit with the door slightly open. I knocked at first and called his name one more time, but he didn't answer. I was worried, so I decided to take a chance and push the door open, only to find Akiteru unconscious, curled up on the floor. I freaked out and shook him, and he just... shot up gasping. It was at that point I noticed a small plastic bag of what looked like pills sitting on the edge of the sink. Still freaking out, I put two and two together."

Yamaguchi paused slightly, shuddering at the fear the memory brought him.

"I demanded to know what they were, but Akiteru kept trying to shush me. He reached across the floor and closed the bathroom door behind me before whispering that they were sleeping pills he got from a friend of his at the college. He said that he was taking them as anxiety meds, because his family was having trouble adjusting to his dad's new promotion among other things, and he didn't want Tsukki or his mom to worry about him. He said his anxiety was getting in the way of his school work and his job, and he really needed the pills."

Sugawara draped his arm gently around Yamaguchi's shoulders as he started to cry.

"I tried to open the door to leave; I was going to go tell Mrs. Tsukishima because those things are dangerous, you know? But he grabbed me by the arm before I could reach the door and begged me not to tell on him. He said that since he bought them from a friend and they weren't prescribed to him, if I told anyone about it he could go to jail. He said that if I did, I'd make everything worse... I told him that there was no way I'd keep quiet. I'd just found him unconscious on the floor! I mean, I was really about to go call his mom and take him to the hospital. He then promised me he was getting help and that everything would just blow over if I let him handle it."

"Yamaguchi, that's terrible! It's hard to believe Akiteru would do something like that."

"Something you have to understand about Akiteru and Tsukki, is that as wildly different as their personalities are, they both have this habit of hiding their problems when they think they'll hurt someone they care about. At one point Akiteru took it too far and it destroyed their relationship. If he thinks that bottling his emotion will help Tsukki, then he'll do anything."

"Yamaguchi..."

"Suga, why did I trust him? If I hadn't trusted him... If I had just gone back downstairs and told Mrs. Tsukishima anyway - it would have ended right there. Akiteru might have gotten arrested for drug dealing or something, sure... but at least he'd be alive."

Suddenly, a look of horror and realization spread over Yamaguchi's face. He dropped the bunny onto the floor in shock.

"... C-can I go to jail for this?"

Sugawara almost didn't hear his teammate at first, he had spoken so quietly. Even once he was sure about what Yamaguchi had said, he still had trouble registering the magnitude of his words. Yamaguchi... in jail? For what? What had he really done? Then he realized. Akiteru was dead, because of pills he was getting illegally, that Yamaguchi knew about, and yet did nothing to stop. Was that enough for the police to tag him as an accomplice to Akiteru's death? Sugawara knew there were laws about not reporting known crime, especially when a person's death was involved, but it wasn't like Yamaguchi was the one selling him the pills - and he was a minor as well. All in all, Sugawara didn't know enough about law to answer Yamaguchi's question honestly. And he wasn't about to tell a sixteen-year-old kid whose father just had a stroke, lost one friend to a drug overdose, and may lose another to a maniac with a handgun that he could go to jail for something he didn't do because of a technicality. Maybe he was better off telling Yamaguchi that he was safe, even if he didn't know whether or not that was actually true. As soon as he made the decision, he wondered if this was why parents often told their children white lies - to give them comfort, even if it was only for a little while.

"Of course not. You had nothing to do with this. And besides, you're a minor. They can't do put you in jail if you're under eighteen unless you committed a felony."

"Are you sure?" Yamaguchi asked with the smallness of a toddler. Sugawara paused a half second before answering.

"Absolutely. You're fine." The words tasted sour the moment they left his mouth. He almost hated himself. Sugawara hoped that'd be the end of it, that they could go back to Ukai and wait for news about Tsukishima all together while Sugawara bleached his brain of the lie he'd just told, but the look on Yamaguchi's face told him he had something else in mind.

"Despite whether or not the law thinks so, my negligence still cost Akiteru his life... If Tsukki lives... he'll never forgive me..."

"I think Tsukishima would understand you didn't mean for Akiteru to hurt himself." Yamaguchi stared steadily at the floor. He picked the rabbit back up and hugged it for comfort.

"Tsukki doesn't handle his emotions very well. I'm sure he'll understand somewhere, but who knows how long it will take him to get to that point. He'll need to process his brother's death and the trauma of what happened to him... not to mention he'll be recovering physically, too, so he'll probably be in a lot of pain..."

"Look, Tsukishima's a rational guy, right? So everything will be fine."

"I guess..."

Sugawara had never tried to give such serious advice before. He knew he didn't know what he was doing, and he hoped that Yamaguchi felt more comfortable with what he was saying than he did. Fortunately for him, fate saved him from the awkward conversation before it could continue. He felt his cell phone vibrate against his leg. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw that it was a text message from Coach.

"It's a text from Coach! He said Tsukishima's out of surgery. They're going down to the ICU to see him. Let's go!" Sugawara and Yamaguchi stood from their places and practically ran from the waiting room, leaving the stuffed bunny on the seat behind them.


	18. Chapter 18

The first emotion Amaya Tsukishima felt standing behind her son's hospital room door was fear. It crept from her chest into her throat, squeezing it shut as her memory flooded with the recent images of Akiteru's lifeless body laying atop a cold metal slab in the morgue. She felt like she couldn't breathe. He's alive, she reminded herself, _This isn't the same situation at all. Kei is alive_. Even so, she was afraid he would _look_ like he was dead, and that would be enough to trigger the trauma that had been racing around her head since the grisly image first took hold in her mind.

She just had to look for the clues, that's all - visible, tangible facts to anchor herself to the reality that her son was alive, that Kei had not been swallowed by the same endless, oppressive darkness that had taken Akiteru. Things like... a heart monitor. He'd definitely be connected to one, and it would show her that her son's heart was still beating steadily inside his chest. That was it. Whenever she felt scared, overwhelmed by Akiteru's loss, she would look at the heart monitor, and it would give her hope.

When the doctor opened the door in front of her, Amaya braced herself for what she might see. As the door slowly revealed more and more of her son's room, she felt her mind quickly devour the information it presented to her. Kei was lying in the hospital bed unconscious and almost completely motionless, the only exception the slow and steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed evenly and mechanically. He was covered in tubes and wires, the most obvious one leading from his mouth to a ventilator in the corner next to the right side of his head. There was second one, from his chest this time, leading from the right side of his rib cage to a canister on the floor. The rest were IV lines, leading from Kei's wrist to multiple bags of what Amaya could only assume were the drugs keeping her little boy alive. Lastly, he was also connected to a heart monitor, set up near the left side of the bed, keeping in perfect sync with Kei's fragile heartbeat.

Hospital equipment aside, Kei looked like death warmed over. His skin had the pale and delicate appearance of tissue paper, and even though he'd been admitted for less than half a day he looked somehow thinner, smaller than he seemed when he was lounging around at home or jumping to block a powerful spike. It was like he was being swallowed up after all - swallowed by the massive amount of hospital equipment necessary just for him to be here and breathing.

Amaya listened to the mechanical sound of the ventilator, caught somewhere between a _whoosh_ and a _hiss_ , listened as it synced with the steady beeping of the heart monitor, and for the umpteenth time that night, began to weep. She wept for how breakable human beings were. She wept for how easily she lost someone she loved with all her heart. She wept for all the painful, agonizing days and restless, sleepless nights she had in her future. She wept for how long it would take her and her family to recover from the bomb blast that shattered their lives like tiny shards of glass. She wept for all the pain she would watch Kei experience over these coming weeks, even months, and how much she wished she could simply take it all on herself, and spare the little boy who was so precious to her. She was so wrapped up inside her own head, she didn't notice Ukai, Sugawara, and Yamaguchi enter the room behind her.

"Tsukki..." Yamaguchi mumbled as he brought his hands to his mouth, just in time to catch the tears that fell from his eyes. He had never seen his best friend in such a weakened state. The image of Kei Tsukishima in Yamaguchi's mind was one of strength - cool, calm, the smartest guy in the room, and always ready to face anyone who threatened either of their comfort zones with a snide comment and a well-timed smirk. Even when Tsukki got hurt in the Shiratorizawa game, he put on a face for the team and dealt with it - he even played better than ever when he got back onto the court. Tsukki wasn't a weakling; Tsukki was strong. Yamaguchi had never seen his best friend look so... frail.

Sugawara's first emotion upon seeing Tsukishima's unconscious form, contrary to expectation, was relief. The last mental image he had of his teammate was one covered in blood and gasping for air. Seeing him now, despite the fact that he was covered in hospital equipment and barely alive, was calming, because it meant that he was stable. For the first time, Sugawara had reconciled with himself, at least a little bit. Kei Tsukishima would not die today. Now, he was sure.

Ukai felt like he had been coasting all night, and now he had finally come down to earth with the rise of the morning sun. He didn't have quite the emotional connection to Tsukishima that Yamaguchi or Amaya had, and he hadn't seen the incident like Sugawara. He felt like somehow it wasn't real, that since he hadn't actually seen anything, he felt that he had probably gotten through the night by subconsciously believing that everything was fine. But seeing Tsukishima barely alive in a hospital bed had opened his eyes in a way. This was real. Somehow, he believed his naivete had saved him.

As Amaya stood silently at the foot of the bed, the doctor came up beside her and, seeing that she was upset, put his hand on her shoulder. Without looking at him, Amaya spoke.

"Please tell me... I... I need to know..." Understanding completely, the doctor explained, starting from the top.

"The bullet entered his body at a downward angle on the right side of his rib cage. It broke his seventh rib upon entry, and became lodged in his liver, where we found it. The force the bullet released upon breaking the rib sent shards of bone into his liver and his right lung, puncturing it, causing it to partially collapse and fill with blood. We removed the bullet and pieces of bone from his liver, removed the pieces of bone from his lung, and repaired as much of the damage as we could."

"...God..."

"Right now, the ventilator is breathing for him. We'll keep an eye on him over the next few hours and we'll remove the ventilator once we're sure his lungs can stand on their own. He also has a chest tube filtering out whatever air and blood remains between his lung and the inner wall of his chest. That could stay in place anywhere from a few days to a week, depending on how long he needs it. Lastly, we also put him on several IVs. One is a blood transfusion to help him bounce back from all the blood he lost, another is an antibiotic to help ward off any post-op infections, another is morphine to help with his pain, and the last is a sedative to keep him unconscious until it's safe to wake him up."

"Until it's safe to... You mean you're keeping him under?"

"For the time being, yes. Generally, if a patient's on a ventilator, we keep them unconscious at least until it's safe enough to remove it, to avoid the panic of waking up to having a tube stuck down your throat. In his case, since he's just undergone a very delicate and risky procedure, we'll keep him under for another twenty-four hours. This will give us time to see how well his body is recovering and be ready in case there's an emergency, and it also lets him sleep through a little bit of the pain."

"My little baby..." As she listened blindly to the doctor's explanation, Amaya absent-mindedly made her way around to the side of her son's bed and reached out to take his hand, suddenly stopping herself. She looked up at the doctor and gave him a questioning look.

"Of course," he replied, understanding the question held in her gaze, "It might help him to know you're here."

Amaya took Kei's hand gently inside her own, feeling the soft warmth of his skin. The sensation flooded her body with an immense feeling of relief. Kei was alive and he was there - right in front of her eyes. She could feel the life pulsing inside him with her own two hands.

"Kei..." she began, pausing every so often to breathe through her tears, "I know you're scared, baby... and I know you're in a lot of pain... but Mommy's gonna be right here by your side, okay? Because you're my son, and I love you." She folded her arms on the edge of her son's hospital bed, burying herself in their embrace. Sleep tugged on the backs of her eyelids with a strength she could never hope to overcome. The constant level of high-intensity emotion she'd been forced to put out all night had finally caught up to her with the morning's sunrise. She was so exhausted...

Amaya was startled awake by a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes snapped open, fearful of how much time had passed. When she lifted her head from its resting place, she was relieved to find that it had only been a few seconds. She saw Sugawara beside her, and figured that he was probably the one who woke her.

"I... just wanted to let you know... I'm going to step out for a minute to call my mom. I told her I'd let her know when Tsukishima was out of surgery." Amaya noticed Sugawara was holding his phone in his hand, contacts list open to his own mother's number.

"Koushi..."

"I'll be right back."

"Koushi, dear, please go home and get some sleep. You've been up all night and there's nothing more you can do for now. You've seen it through. He's alive. Now please let yourself rest."

"But - "

"Please. For me." Sugawara paused, contemplating. Before he could answer, Yamaguchi chimed in.

"If you want, Sugawara, I can call my mom to take us both home." Sugawara sighed.

"Yeah... Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Thanks, Yamaguchi." With that, both boys left the room. After the door shut behind them, the doctor once again addressed Amaya.

"If there's anything else you need, Mrs. Tsukishima, the nurse's station knows where to find me." The distraught mother looked up at him with gratitude.

"Yes, thank-you so much." The doctor then left the room as well, leaving only Amaya and Ukai at Tsukishima's bedside.

Amaya knew she should probably get some rest, too, but she couldn't bear to go home to such an empty house. With Yoshirou in America, Kei in the hospital, and Akiteru... out of the picture, she couldn't go home to the resounding desolation that waited for her there. She was so used to the ever-present life-force in her home that she simply couldn't stand the idea that the walls would be silent and everything would be still.

It was during this train of thought that Amaya realized that, at some point, she would have to dismantle Akiteru's room. The thought made her want to vomit. _It'll smell like him_ , she realized, _That'll be the worst part_. Akiteru's belongings, his clothes, his bed sheets, even the carpet, would all carry the scent of the life he'd once lived. She thought about giving some of his things to Kei, partially because she figured Kei would want them (though he'd never admit it), partially because she didn't feel like she could part with them herself, but she realized that would work for very little of what Akiteru owned. Sure, maybe Kei would want some of the volleyball equipment and dinosaur figurines, but there was little else her younger son could use. Kei was tall and rail-thin, while Akiteru was shorter, more muscular, and had much broader shoulders. Very little of Akiteru's clothing would fit Kei, and they had completely different tastes in books, games, and just about everything else. Besides, it would be weeks before Kei would even be in a fit enough mental and physical state to deal with his brother's death, and the room would just be sitting there taunting her until then.

"Amaya."

Pulling herself out of her spiraling thoughts, she snapped her head around to look at Ukai, who had come up beside her.

"Take your own advice. Get some rest. Sugawara and Yamaguchi aren't the only ones who didn't sleep last night." Amaya answered without looking at him.

"Thank you, but I'm going to stay here with Kei. He needs me."

"Listen to yourself. You're burnt out and you've just been through hell. If you don't sleep, you aren't going to be in any position to be there for him." Amaya couldn't take her eyes off Kei as she continued to caress his hand.

"Ukai, you aren't a parent. I don't expect you to understand, but I'm needed right here in this room, not at home in bed." Ukai sighed, keeping his temper in check. He knew this defiance wasn't Amaya talking, but her exhaustion, grief, and deep concern for Tsukishima's wellbeing. Someone had to be the adult here, and it was only natural that Amaya would be unable to fulfill that role.

"Okay, fine." he said, mostly out of resignation, "Stay here, but get some sleep at some point. I'm going to let the team know their friend is alive, and then I'm going home to pass out." Before Amaya could respond in any way, Ukai had left the room.

* * *

As Ukai walked the trek through the halls of Miyagi General Hospital back to the parking lot to find his car, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, checked the time, and opened it to the volleyball team's group chat. Just after 6:30am - it was about time they knew their teammate's fate. Hell, half of them were probably even still awake solely because they were still waiting for news, and the other half were going to be waking up for school about now, anyway.

As Ukai stared at the blank screen in front of him, his thumbs hovered aimlessly over the keys. _Wait, how am I actually going to say this?_ , he found himself thinking. As exhausted as he was, he couldn't be too callous. Word choices didn't bother him nearly as much as information itself, but he knew that certain sensitive members of the team might be bothered if he failed to choose his words carefully. After several seconds of pondering, he began to type.

_Alright, guys, here's the rundown..._

_The big one: Tsukishima's alive. The bullet damaged a few of his internal organs, but he pulled through alright, and he's sleeping peacefully in the ICU. The doctors are keeping him unconscious for the next 24 hours, so if any of you want to visit after school today, remember he won't be awake to see and talk to you, and make sure you ask Mrs. Tsukishima's permission first. I'll forward you all her cell phone number in a bit._

_Secondly, I'm not holding practice today. If some of you want to get together and play a little, be my guest, but there won't be any penalty for not showing up. Consider it my apology for waking you all up last night. Besides, I know at least a few of you didn't sleep, and it's more important that you rest than exhaust yourselves even further._

_I just want to leave you all with a little heart-to-heart from me. I know tensions ran a little high last night, but as important as volleyball is to all of you, our bonds as a team should be first on your minds. Tsukishima and his family are going through a very difficult time right now, and squabbling over Nationals isn't going to help him recover any faster. I know you're all trying your best to keep yourselves together after what happened, and I respect that. Just remember that the team comes first._

_Alright, I've rambled enough. Get to class._

_-Coach_

He re-read the text a few times, figured it was good enough, and pressed send. Ukai then scrolled through his contacts list until he found Amaya's contact information and sent that through the group as well. All that done, the next contact he searched was Ittetsu Takeda.

The phone rang for several seconds before a seemingly flustered Takeda picked up the line.

"Uh, hello?"

"Sensei."

"Oh, Ukai! Hey, how is everything? And, uh, could you make it quick? Sorry, I'm leaving for the school as we speak. I have a few last minute papers to grade." Ukai heard what sounded like a muffled thump, followed by a soft "ow."

"Well, you might want to settle down for a minute. I've got good news and I've got bad news." Takeda stopped in his tracks.

"Oh."

"Which do you want first?"

"The good, I suppose." Ukai reached the parking lot. He looked around a little for his car before giving up and pressing the unlock button on the key fob. He looked for the flashing headlights, and made his way in that direction.

"Alright, good news is Tsukishima made it. He's recovering in the ICU right now. His mother's there with him."

"That's a relief! Wait, then what's the bad news?" Ukai sighed as he opened the driver's side door, pulling himself into the front seat. Switching to speakerphone, he dropped his phone into the empty cup holder as he put his keys into the ignition and started the engine.

"Do you remember during the Shiratorizawa game, there was an older kid sitting in the front row wearing a sports jacket?"

"Come to think of it, yeah I do."

"That was Tsukishima's older brother, Akiteru. Not only is he a Karasuno alum, but he also played for the volleyball team." Turning the steering wheel at a hard right angle, Ukai made his way to the parking garage's exit ramp. He was so tired.

"Okay...?"

"He died of a drug overdose last night."

"I'm so sorry..."

"I haven't told the team yet. Most of them didn't really know him, and they're all still reeling from this whole deal with Tsukishima, so I was going to let them figure it out when the papers catch wind of the whole mess."

"That might be for the best."

"Yeah... Anyway, I just wanted to keep you updated. I'm going home to forget last night ever happened."

"Sure... Goodbye, Ukai." Ukai hung up the phone without replying. He figured that last comment would probably worry Takeda, but at the moment, Ukai didn't really care. As he pulled out of the parking garage and into the early morning sunlight, Keishin Ukai felt weak. Realizing he was finally coming down off his adrenaline (and the stress of being the responsible adult the entire night), he decided to take a shortcut home. He was so tired, the less time he spent behind the wheel of a moving car, the better off he would be. As he pulled into the parking lot of his apartment, Ukai realized that what he was about to do was probably the most unhealthy way he could possibly cope with his emotions.

And he didn't give a damn.


	19. Chapter 19

Sugawara and Yamaguchi sat half asleep in the back seat of the car. The pair had waited in the lobby for their ride for twenty minutes as Sugawara called his mom to update her on the situation. She was concerned, having not heard from her Koushi in several hours, but she understood the circumstances and was relieved to hear that her son's teammate had pulled through. He decided not to tell her about Akiteru.

"So, yeah..." Sugawara said as he climbed into the car and buckled his seat belt, "Yamaguchi's mom's taking me home, so I should be back soon." However, before the two could say their goodbyes, Yamaguchi interrupted their conversation. Reaching over from his seat on the other side of the car, he tugged firmly on Sugawara's shirt sleeve.

"Hey, Suga," he whispered, "I know this is last minute, but... um... I'm really not okay right now. I figured... since my mom already said I could skip school today, can we hang out at your place for a bit? I'm sorry to ask, but... I just... after what happened, I really don't wanna be alone right now." Sugawara turned to look at his teammate, and offered an exhausted, yet sincere smile in reply.

"Uh, hey, mom...," he said, turning his attention back to his phone conversation, "I was thinking... I didn't really sleep last night, and after everything that happened, I really don't have the energy to go to school... I can? Great, thanks... So in that case, can Yamaguchi spend some time at our house? Really? Thanks so much! Okay, love you." Sugawara hung up the phone and stuck it in his pocket.

"Good news: My mom gave us the green light. Is there anything you wanna pick up from home?"

In the end, they stopped briefly at Yamaguchi's house so he could grab a change of clothes and a toothbrush before continuing on their way. All the while, Sugawara sat slumped against the back seat of the car, his head resting against the window. He could feel the sunlight caress his forehead, and the only thing preventing him from simply falling asleep was the vibration of the car's engine that radiated through the cool surface, rattling his brain out of its stupor. He watched the trees and buildings pass by on the side of the road as he tried with all his strength not to think about the nightmare he'd just lived through. He wished he could say that it didn't feel real, that it felt like just that - a nightmare - but that simply wasn't the case. Every iota of pain, every touch of fear, sadness, and grief was all too real to him. Every time he looked down at his hands and studied the faint pink stains peeking through the bandages, Sugawara felt himself fall, reeling backwards to live the entire ordeal over from the beginning. The pain of the injury had faded, but he was afraid the pain of the memories it brought would never lessen.

Sugawara snapped out of his thoughts when he felt the car hit the rough edge of his driveway. He felt something deep inside himself settle just a little bit at the soothing sight of his childhood home, soft sunflower yellow siding and bountiful dogwood trees shading the weather-worn porch. As Sugawara lifted himself from the backseat and stepped out of the car, he saw his mother hurriedly throw open the screen door and rush onto the porch. Still clad in her pajamas and slippers, hand towel thrown over her shoulder, Mrs. Sugawara ran down the front stairs and scooped him up into her open arms. Sugawara hardly had time to process what was happening before his mother began rambling lovingly in his ear.

"... finished making your breakfast and started doing dishes to clean up the kitchen a little bit before you got home. Your bed's made, I found some of your favorite bubble bath in the bathroom cupboard, and I even set out some of your favorite tea."

"Thanks, mom."

Mrs. Sugawara took her son's shoulders, kissed his face, and held him out at arm's length. It was at that point she noticed the bandages wrapped around Sugawara's hands. Letting go of his shoulders, she gasped as she hurriedly took his hands, brought them to her face, and kissed the tips of his fingers.

"Koushi, your hands! What happened? Does it hurt?" Sugawara pulled his hands from his mother's grasp.

"I'm fine, mom, it's nothing." Mrs. Sugawara took his wrist and pulled him toward the house.

"Come on, pumpkin, let's go take a look just to be safe." Suddenly, she stopped as if remembering something, and turned her head to look at Yamaguchi and his mom, who were getting out of the car themselves.

"Oh, I'm sorry, where are my manners? Mrs. Yamaguchi, thank-you so much for bringing him home." Mrs. Yamaguchi flashed a smile that, to Sugawara, almost looked like a smirk.

"Not a big deal," She turned to Yamaguchi, "Make sure you get some sleep at some point, Tadashi. If your father comes home and you're cranky, he's going to pitch a fit." Yamaguchi gave his mother an embarrassed glance, hunching his shoulders so he was just out of her reach.

"... I will, mom."

Mrs. Yamaguchi said goodbye to the trio shortly before getting back into her car and pulling out of the driveway. After she was gone, Mrs. Sugawara practically dragged the two boys into the house, giving Yamaguchi free reign over the kitchen while she took a look at her son's injured knuckles. Having cleaned and re-bandaged them, all the while fussing over why her son wasn't telling her where the injuries came from, Mrs. Sugawara was quick to make sure both boys were clean, comfortable, and well-fed. After asking them for the umpteenth time if there was anything else she could do for them, she finally left them to themselves upstairs in Sugawara's bedroom.

As the boys lounged together on Sugawara's bed, mindlessly watching the movie his mom had put on for them, Yamaguchi felt an indescribable itch in the center of his brain. In a weird way, it frustrated him that he and his teammate weren't talking about what had just happened to them. If he took the time to glance sideways at his teammate's face, it was all too obvious that Sugawara wasn't enjoying the movie any more than he was. His expression was pained and far away; it was clear his mind was back at the hospital ICU, and not on the cheesy action unfolding in front of him.

In a way, Yamaguchi was almost afraid to sleep, even though it was quickly approaching 8am and he could feel the exhaustion toying at the back of his mind. If he was asleep, there was no way he could fend off the ensuing nightmare he was sure to encounter while he was one step removed from his current reality. As he watched his friend, he found himself wondering if Sugawara felt the same way, if the only reason he was enduring the ever-encroaching fatigue was because he, too, was afraid of the spectres that were sure to plague his dreams.

_Him more so than me,_ Yamaguchi found himself thinking, _He actually saw it_. He tried not to think about whatever it was Sugawara was about to say in the gym before Daichi had cut him off. _He was covered in blood..._

"Hey, Suga?" Yamaguchi asked as he picked up the remote and paused the movie.

"Yeah?"

"I just wanted to say... I'm sorry for what happened in the club room last night. I was upset, and I wasn't thinking straight." Sugawara turned to face him, not quite meeting Yamaguchi's apologetic gaze.

"No... it's okay. I understand. Tsukishima means a lot to you. I should have expected that you'd get upset." The two were overcome with several seconds of awkward silence. Yamaguchi, unwilling to un-pause the movie just yet, broke the ice.

"So... um... How are you doing?" Sugawara took one of the folded knitted blankets sitting on the corner of his bed and absentmindedly covered himself with it, fidgeting with a frayed piece of yarn on one of the corners.

"... fine," he finally replied. Yamaguchi shot him an incredulous look.

"... No, really. I'll be okay. I think I just need some sleep." He tossed Yamaguchi a second folded blanket and a pillow, courtesy of his mother, "Here, you should get some sleep, too. We'll feel better in a few hours."

Yamaguchi was hesitant to let the conversation drop after Sugawara so abruptly shut him down, but he knew that getting anywhere with his teammate was going to be next to impossible until they were both fully rested. Reluctantly shutting off the movie, Yamaguchi took his blanket and pillow and curled up on the air mattress on the floor. Sugawara shut the blinds and took his own place on the bed, and the two fell asleep.

* * *

Ukai opened the front door to his apartment with only one thing on his mind. He kicked his shoes off at the door and lazily and tossed his car keys onto the kitchen table before emptying his pockets. Nicotine. He needed nicotine. Rifling through the odd coins and such, he pulled his lighter from the pile and lit a cigarette without a second thought.

Cigarette hanging from his lips, Ukai shuffled toward his kitchen cabinets. He pulled a glass from the confines of the one above the sink and set it on the table. He then returned to the sink and, sitting back on his haunches, he opened the cabinet below. From this one, he pulled a very large and very full bottle of scotch and set it on the table next to his glass. He pulled up a chair.

_Fuck this shit. Fuck every last bit of this shit_ , he found himself thinking as he screwed off the bottle's lid and poured himself a glass. Ukai wanted to forget it. He wanted to drown everything that happened to him last night out of his brain until the last twenty-four hours of his life bled into one big drunken mess. A group of innocent kids who have done nothing to deserve the crap hand life dealt them received the worst news of their lives while a perfectly normal family all but fell apart in the span of a few hours. And he was at the head of it all, holding these people together by the barest threads with absolutely no knowledge of what he was doing, or if anything he was saying was even helping. It left him hollow, with an intense feeling of futility. It wasn't like leading the team. He knew volleyball. He'd grown up in it, and he when he taught volleyball, he knew he wasn't leading the players astray. Volleyball was easy. The people who played it weren’t. 

It wasn't long before Ukai had completely lost track of time. He was coherent enough to be in control of his own thoughts for the first few drinks, but after glass number four, and cigarette number who gives a damn, his kitchen began to fuzz, and the minutes on his kitchen clock began to tick faster than he could possibly follow. As his vision blurred, and his stomach began to churn in ways that reminded him a little too much of the darker parts of his high school days, Ukai relished at the feeling of his emotion receding into the back of his mind.

It was at around drink six or seven that Ukai began to regret his decisions. Having that much straight scotch in his system without any sort of meal beforehand wasn't exactly the smartest thing he could have done, and his stomach was really starting to remind him why he always woke up the morning after his bouts of binge drinking with Nekoma's coaches regretting his existence.

_That's probably enough_ , he thought less than coherently as he attempted to stand from his kitchen chair. As he pushed his body weight onto his feet, Ukai's stomach jumped into his throat, and it was all he could do to keep himself from vomiting into his own lap. As he tried to steady himself, he found his sense of balance swinging all over the place, and was unable to keep his footing. As a result, Ukai lost what little balance he had, and he collapsed onto the floor, losing consciousness.

* * *

Amaya felt much lonelier once Ukai and the others had gone. Now that it was just her and an unconscious Kei, it was a lot easier for her to slip back into the paralyzing fear that had plagued her the night before. As still as Kei was, she couldn't seem to pry her eyes from her beloved son. It didn't make sense. She knew he was under sedation - he wasn't going to do anything - but she couldn't shake the fear that something would go horribly wrong as soon as her back was turned. She wondered if it could have something to do with Akiteru's loss, that the last time she left her eldest son alone without a second thought was the one time he was crudely taken from her.

"I'm not going to lose you, too." She murmured from her visitor's chair, her eyes flitting over to the heart monitor every so often to keep herself steady, "I already lost your brother. I'm not going to lose you, too." It wasn't long before she was swallowed by her thoughts and lost track of time.

She was shaken from her stupor by the opening of the hospital room door. In entered a nurse carrying a clipboard with a rather large looking pile of papers. She took a few steps into the room and closed the door behind her.

"Hello, Mrs. Tsukishima," she greeted, wearing a sunny morning smile, "I'm Itsumi. I have the insurance paperwork here for your son's surgery." Amaya stood to meet her.

"Yes," she said, hoping she didn't sound nearly as exhausted and mentally drained as she felt, "Thank-you." As Amaya took the clipboard and attached pen from Itsumi's hand and sat back down in her chair, Itsumi crossed the room to Kei's hospital bed. She took the chart hanging from the foot of his bed and checked it over, seeming at the very least comfortable with whatever she saw. She lifted one or two of the hanging IV bags and checked them as well, once again seeming content with whatever it was that she saw.

"He's doing great!" She exclaimed as she pored over the charts, "His lungs seem to be holding really well. I'll go talk to Dr. Fujimori about removing the ventilator."

Amaya let her concern ease just a little at the nurse's optimism. She had realized upon checking her phone that it had been a couple hours since Kei had been let out of surgery, and to hear that he was doing so well so soon was gave her a magnitude of relief that Amaya had never dreamed she could achieve. As she sat and filled out Kei's insurance paperwork, she stared out the window and watched the birds flit about in the trees. As she watched a mother bird feed her babies in a nearby nest, she let herself believe, just for a little bit, that maybe... everything would be okay after all.


	20. Chapter 20

Daichi listened to the dull _thump_ of his sneakers as he walked to school that morning, taking solace in the new spring warmth that had decided to finally ride into Torono on a gentle breeze. Head down, he watched for puddles leftover from last night's rainstorm. Daichi knew that worrying about the rain wouldn't matter - that he'd have to change into his indoor shoes anyway - but he'd rather not deal with the annoyance that a pair of soaked, muddy sneakers would cause him when he changed back at the end of the day.

Before long, the captain trudged up the walkway to the school's front doors and curled his fingers around the metal handle, internally sighing at the cool water that still adorned its surface, wiping his hand off onto his uniform pants as he went. Soon after changing his shoes and finally reaching his classroom, Daichi sat down at his desk and reviewed his daily mental checklist for about the third time that morning, trying his best to keep his mind on the tasks of the day and not on the drama that last night's catastrophe was sure to provoke. Upon looking around, Daichi noticed the one desk he knew would be empty: Sugawara's. _Suga had a really rough night last night,_ he found himself thinking, _He's probably at home getting some much needed sleep._

As if missing his vice captain wasn't enough, it was upon walking into his first period Chemistry class that he noticed another missing teammate: Asahi. It didn't make as much sense, but he still found it completely understandable. Asahi might not have had any direct part in the nightmare that occurred last night, but he was far more delicate than his appearance led people to believe. Besides, he'd gotten to know Mr. and Mrs. Azumane fairly well over these last three years. After as big of an affair as the team meeting last night, he wasn't surprised that Asahi's parents kept him home today.

It was a strange feeling, not having Suga or Asahi to keep him company. Sure, Asahi was absent on occasion (anytime his overprotective parents deemed it necessary to keep him home), but Suga had gotten a perfect attendance award every year for the last five years straight. Not having either of them at his side was a lonely feeling that made Daichi more uncomfortable than he would have liked to admit.

Over the course of the day, Daichi would discover the true magnitude of the damage that had befallen the rest of the team. Tsukishima was obviously absent, and so was Yamaguchi. After a quick chat with a highly distraught Nishinoya in the hallway after second period, he thought Tanaka would be absent as well, but as it happened, Tanaka turned up around lunch time. The rest of the team was present, but after talking with the handful of players he ran into in the hallways every so often, Daichi quickly learned that actually being at school was causing more problems than staying at home.

All in all, Daichi had a rough morning. Between missing Suga and Asahi in class and periodically seeing how badly his teammates were handling the depression and exhaustion of last night, Daichi would be glad when this whole shebang was over and done with.

* * *

Tobio Kageyama was not what most people would consider a good student - Mrs. Nakada knew this fact very well. He almost never had the correct answers when she called on him, and he always seemed to be staring at her with the vacant look that, over the course of her thirty years of teaching, she had come to associate with two types of students: those who were simply not paying attention, and those who were very, very confused. She could tell that on most days, Kageyama fell into the latter category. Math didn't seem to be this student's strong suit, and it made sense. It was nonsense to think one could become a math teacher without encountering scores of students who complained about the horrors of mathematics.

And sure, despite his earnest efforts at learning her class material, Kageyama was far from a model student. She could tell by watching the way he interacted (or didn't interact) with the other students in her class and in the hallway, Tobio Kageyama definitely had an attitude. He was very clear on the things he did care about, and the things he didn't, and he often made it very obvious that despite his attempts at actually learning from her class, he did not care about it. She didn't know what his motivation was for trying so hard, whether he had pressure from his parents to keep his grades up or a club that required a certain GPA, but whatever it was, something had changed, because today was the worst Mrs. Nakada had ever seen him act.

Unlike usual, Kageyama didn't even have his books out on his desk. He simply sat there staring out the window next to his seat, twirling a single mechanical pencil deftly between his fingers. She called on him a few times throughout class, but he either refused to answer or otherwise mumbled to the point that she couldn't hear him anyway. About halfway through class Mrs. Nakada decided she had enough. As she explained a homework question to another student, right in the middle of her sentence, Tobio Kageyama yawned. Very loudly. She turn on her heel to face him.

"Excuse me, Kageyama, is my class interrupting your nap?"

Kageyama could have handled this situation a number of different ways. He could have scowled and hoped Mrs. Nakada continued teaching. He could have apologized and made at least some effort to pay attention for the rest of the period. What he should not have done is exactly what he did next.

"Yes! Thanks to this dumbass school, I was here in the middle of the night instead of sleeping at home!" he shouted, leaning forward in his desk, making no effort to control his anger.

_If Kageyama wants to play this game,_ Mrs. Nakada thought, outraged at her student's disobedience, _then I'll play along._

"Humor me for a minute, Kageyama. Why were you at school in the middle of the night?" Kageyama could hear the sass in his teacher's voice and it infuriated him. After last night, he was not in the mood to deal with this shit.

"Because my team needed me! I'm not just gonna stay home when my team has an emergency!"

"Kageyama, I don't care that your team had an emergency, or that you didn't sleep last night. This is my class, and you will pay attention!"

If the argument had just ended there, Kageyama might have gotten through the rest of class without further incident. However, before the temperamental setter could respond to his algebra teacher, another student decided to throw in his two cents.

"Hey, don't sweat it, Mrs. Nakada," he teased, "Everyone comes second to Kageyama's precious volleyball!" In the heat of the moment, Kageyama stood so forcefully from his seat that he knocked his chair to the floor with a loud clatter. Hands balled into fists, the angry teenager wanted nothing more than to beat this kid's face into the tile floor.

"What the hell did you just say!?"

That was it, Mrs. Nakada decided. This was where the circus act ended.

"Hey, quiet! Kageyama, to the principal's office! Now!"

Furious to the point of seeing red, Kageyama bounded from the classroom, glad he could take a walk to clear his head.

It was on his walk to the principal's office that he ran into a certain orange-haired spiker. Kageyama was so focused on the floor, that he didn't see Hinata walk straight into him. As soon as he felt the small shoulder collide with his arm he tensed and started to yell, only to immediately pull back when he saw the rest of the body the shoulder was connected to.

"Hey, watch - oh. Hinata." Hinata looked up to meet his glare, just as startled. "What are you doing here? It's the middle of class."

"Hey, I should be asking you the same thing!" Kageyama noticed there was a tad more hurt in his teammate's voice than when they usually bantered. Hinata seemed to be just as on edge as he was. In a way it was a relief. He wasn't the only one who was apparently still reeling from last night.

"I'm on my way to the principal's office." He finally answered, too bitter and uncomfortable to make eye contact.

"Wha!? What for?" Hinata sputtered. Kageyama was reluctant to tell him about his outburst in class, because he knew Hinata would lord it over him until they graduated. He ultimately decided that he didn't care enough about his situation to lie about it.

"I swore at the teacher."

"Stupid! I told you to stop swearing so much!" In a moment of blind rage (that hadn't quite calmed since his last surge of anger), Kageyama seized Hinata by the collar and swung him into a locker.

"You're telling me I'm supposed to care!?" Hinata yanked his setter's hands from his collar and threw them to the side shortly before placing his own hands in the center of Kageyama's chest and shoving him onto the floor.

"What's gotten into you, Bakageyama!?" Kageyama flew to his feet and went for Hinata's collar again, only for Hinata to swiftly dodge him.

"What do you mean what's gotten into me? Were you even listening last night? Volleyball is the only reason I wake up in the morning," he shouted, "It's the only reason I tolerate this stupid school, so I can go to practice. So now that the team's fallen apart and our dreams of Nationals have been dashed, what the hell am I supposed to care about now!?"

"Do you think you're the only one who's upset about this? Have you looked at anyone else on the team? What happened to teamwork and being in this together?"

Their conversation unfortunately wasn't destined to go any further. By this point their shouting had attracted the attention of several classrooms of students, including a few teachers. As door after door opened into the hallway to see the reason for all the noise, students and teachers alike began to spill out to watch the fight. When Mrs. Nakada re-opened her door at the sound of Kageyama's voice, the first sight she saw was the student she had just sent to the principal's office holding another, smaller student in a headlock. The smaller student, who she vaguely recognized to be Shoyo Hinata, seemed to be trying to bite Kageyama's arm in an attempt to get him to let go. What was wrong with him today? Was he just trying to get into as much trouble as possible?

"Tobio Kageyama!" Both boys froze in their tracks and whipped their heads around to face the teacher who had just shouted.

"I thought I told you to go to the principal's office? Do you want to get expelled?" Kageyama released his grip on Hinata and bowed to his teacher, hoping it looked like an apology when in actuality, he just didn't want to acknowledge the hundred or so eyes of his classmates staring him down. After he straightened himself up again, he stalked moodily toward the principal's office.

"Hinata!" Hinata turned from watching Kageyama stalk down the hallway to once again facing the teacher. "Where are you supposed to be?"

"Um..."

"I want you to sit here until he comes back," she said as she pulled a chair out into the hall, "then I want you to go see the principal, too. There's no way I'm sending you both together just so you can get into another fight." Hinata slowly made his way to the open chair and sank down into it while Mrs. Nakada and the other teachers ushered everyone back into their respective classrooms.

* * *

Daichi would have liked to say that he was surprised at the news of Hinata and Kageyama's fight, but that was sadly not the case. After seeing Kageyama's punishment on the pull-up bar last night, he had a feeling this wouldn't be the last time the temperamental setter would lash out before this nightmare situation had been resolved. And with Hinata, who was naturally at odds with Kageyama all the time anyway, just trying to hold himself together, they were bound to mix about as well as oil and water - or maybe oil and fire.

Unfortunately for Daichi, over half the students at Karasuno had attended the Shiratorizawa game not too long ago, and as a result the boy's volleyball team was still on everybody's radar. And with the fact that Kageyama and Hinata were both on the team and apparently shouting something about volleyball during their fight, the rumor spread like wildfire: Something was very wrong with the Karasuno Boy's Volleyball Club.

It was for that reason Daichi had been pelted with questions from random classmates for the rest of the morning. What was wrong with the team? What happened last night? What did that first year mean when he said they were no longer going to Nationals? It infuriated him. There was no way he was giving away such sensitive information and disrespecting Tsukishima and his family by making him a town celebrity before he even got out of the hospital. The kid was going to have enough problems just trying to recover while completing all his schoolwork. He didn't need to be hounded by curious classmates as well.

After turning down handfuls of such classmates throughout the morning, Daichi was looking forward to simply relaxing and eating his lunch in peace. Now that the sun was out and shining bright, having dried up the moisture from last night's rain, Daichi figured it might take a load off his mind to escape the press long enough to eat his lunch outside in the school courtyard. He was about halfway through his lunch when he was approached by another student, this time, someone he recognized.

"Michimiya. I didn't expect to see you out here."

"I've been looking all over the school for you." She said as she sat next to him in the grass, "Everyone's really worried about the team."

"Worried about the team?" Daichi asked between mouthfuls of food, "Or interested in our misfortune?"

"Well, to be honest, I would have said interested until the news hit just now." Daichi almost dropped his lunchbox.

"Wait, what news?"

"Haven't you checked facebook today? There's a local news article spreading around the school like a plague. It talks about a shooting that went down at the Family Mart between midnight and 1am last night. It only mentions one person - the victim - and it calls them a 'sixteen-year-old Karasuno student.' Since whoever it was is a minor, the news agency can't use their name, so everyone in the school has been playing twenty questions to figure out which of the first years is absent today."

Daichi, feeling caught between an impossible moral decision, remained silent. After Michimiya realized that Daichi wouldn't say anything, she continued.

"Of course, there's bound to be several students absent in any one class on any given day, but then I heard that Hinata and Kageyama got into a fight this morning, and that they were apparently yelling something about volleyball. That's when I realized that the two events could be connected."

Daichi realized that he'd been cornered. If he told Michimiya that her hunch was correct, then the knowledge that Tsukishima was the victim in question could spread around the school and make the team's recovery process a thousand times harder than it needed to be. On the other hand, it didn't feel right to straight out lie to her, especially after all the encouragement she had given him during the Shiratorizawa game. Maybe... Maybe he just had to trust that she would keep the secret.

"Michimiya... Before I say anything, you need to understand that this information cannot leave this conversation, for reasons that should become obvious as I explain."

Michimiya scooted closer to Daichi as she focused her gaze in his direction.

"Of course. I just wanted to make sure you guys were okay, and to offer my help if there's anything I can do."

"I understand... In a word, yes. They are connected... It was... It was Tsukishima. We had a late practice due to some scheduling conflicts, and he and Sugawara stopped at the Family Mart on their walk home. Someone tried to rob the place, and Tsukishima got caught in the fire. That's what Kageyama meant when he said we'd lost our chance at Nationals. Because it's almost impossible for Tsukishima to recover in time, and the team doesn't have a chance without him."

"Oh, no..." Michimiya gasped as her hands flew to her mouth, "I'm so sorry..."

"Thanks... But I'm sure you understand why the rest of the school can't know it was him. When he returns, the last thing he needs to deal with is being swarmed by his classmates as he's trying to heal from his injuries and catch up on his schoolwork."

"Yeah... That's so awful." Before their conversation could continue, the end of lunch bell rang.

"Hey, I'm going to go. If you guys need anything, please let me know, okay?"

"Of course. Thanks, Michimiya." Daichi packed up the rest of his uneaten food and returned to class.

* * *

Nishinoya was pissed. First, Tanaka didn't even show up to school, and then Hinata and Kageyama went and alerted the entire school to their team's problems by having that fight. People had been coming up to him all morning asking him about the team's first year members, and it was all he could do to avoid shouting at someone. By the time lunch had come around, Karasuno's Guardian Deity had definitely had enough of being around other people for the day. When the teacher announced that it was time for lunch, Nishinoya took his food out of his backpack and headed straight for the door.

He didn't stop until he found the most secluded spot in the school yard - the back entrance. Most people who wanted to eat outside went to the picnic tables or the courtyard because it was near the main entrance, and had the most space. However, there was also a back entrance that wasn't really used by anybody but the school's maintenance workers. Most regular students weren't aware it was even an entrance, and those who were didn't eat there because there wasn't much space, and because it was in such a secluded spot that the school's high walls didn't allow it to get much sun. Nishinoya actually liked this entrance a lot, because it was the best place to go whenever he wanted to skip class. He knew nobody would bother him here. However, before he could begin to eat, he saw Tanaka turn the corner and approach the entrance.

"Oi!" Nishinoya shouted, "Where the hell have you been?" Tanaka seemed to be looking down at his feet as he walked, and his head shot up at the sound of his friend's voice.

"What do you mean where have I been? I was at home with Saeko." Tanaka asked as he approached his teammate. He stood stock still in front of Nishinoya's lounging form, glaring him down. After Saeko’s meltdown, he was really not in the mood. 

"I mean, we've been taking the brunt of this bullshit without you! Hinata and Kageyama got into a fight in the middle of the hallway earlier, and since they were shouting about volleyball, now the entire school knows that something's wrong. On top of that, the news article of the shooting just hit facebook, but since Tsukishima's a minor they couldn't use his name, so now everyone's trying to figure out which of the first years didn't show up to school today. I can't walk two feet down the hall without someone stopping me and asking what's going on. It's only a matter of time before someone realizes everything's connected. It's been nothing less than hell."

"Well, then let me make your day even worse." Tanaka took his phone out of the side pocket of his backpack and scrolled a little. Once he found the page he was looking for, he sat down and handed his phone to Nishinoya. Nishinoya took one look at the screen and immediately wished he hadn't.

"No way."

"Yeah way. Akiteru Tsukishima's obituary."

"So when coach said that Tsukishima's mom called last night about his brother..."

"Yeah." Tanaka put his knees up and buried his face in his hands. "Saeko and I both woke up really late this morning... I was on my way out the door when she found the obituary online. She started rambling about how she had just seen him at the Shiratorizawa game not long ago. When we got home from that game she did nothing but talk about him with mom the rest of the night. The last time she was that into a guy they dated for two years. I think she might have really liked Akiteru. When she woke up and saw that he'd died... she just fell to pieces. So I ended up being even later because I was making sure she was alright before I left." Nishinoya let a scowl cross his face.

"Wasn't Akiteru an alum? That means it won't be long before the rest of the school catches wind of this, too." Nishinoya sighed, ran his fingers through his hair, and after a few breaths, stood from his seated position. He yelled, kicking the wall.

"Dammit! Is anything else going to go wrong today?"

"Even if it doesn't," Tanaka said, "It's going to get way worse before it gets better. Remember, at some point Tsukishima is going to wake up and find out his brother died. He's going to need to come back to school and deal with all the attention." Nishinoya sighed, letting his head fall forward to rest against the cool surface of the brick wall. He did not want to think about his teammate waking up to this hell hole.

"Speaking of Tsukishima, did you get Coach's text?"

"Yeah, I did. Thank god he's alive."

"You gonna go see him after school?"

"Is that even a question? Of course. We're a team, and that means he's getting my support, whether he wants it or not."

Tanaka stood from his place and set his hand on Nishinoya's shoulder. The libero lifted his head from the wall and met his teammate's gaze. Yes, they were a team. Despite the fist fights, the harsh words, and the death, they were a team. And anyone who wanted to mess with that was going to have to go through Nishinoya first.


	21. Chapter 21

Takeda was terrified. Ukai had said this morning that he was going home to forget that last night had ever happened, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that was code for "get very, very drunk." He knew from their nightly adventures with Nekoma's coaches during the training camp that Keishin Ukai was very good at holding his liquor, and that high alcohol tolerance meant that he would also be tempted to keep pushing that tolerance until his body couldn't handle any more - especially if he was _trying_ to get plastered. Given that Ukai, who perpetually kept his ringer on full volume and never slept through it, hadn't answered even one call out of the last fifteen Takeda had just placed, he had every right wonder if his friend had seriously hurt himself this time.

__

As Takeda fast-walked the trek from the school to Ukai's apartment, cell phone clutched in his right hand and bag slung over his left shoulder, he began to second guess himself. _Would Ukai really give himself alcohol poisoning so soon after Tsukishima's tragedy?_ He had to know that the team was already so worked up over current events thus far, that one more incident would not only be incredibly irresponsible, but too much for them to handle.

But then again, the younger Ukai was never known for his forethought and self control, and if he had gone overboard this time, it most likely wasn't on purpose.

Pretty soon the flustered teacher found Ukai's front door. His first instinct was to ring the doorbell, but after several seconds of waiting and not hearing any movement from inside, Takeda moved to force the door open and realized that it was already unlocked. He must have forgotten to lock it behind him when he got home this morning, he thought as he stepped carefully over the threshold. If Ukai's mental state had been such that he'd forgotten to lock his front door, then it only strengthened the possibility that the coach could have been distraught enough to drink himself into a coma. Or worse.

The first thing Takeda noticed once he actually entered the apartment was the odor; the place smelled like old gym socks and stale cigarettes. There were wads of clothing thrown about the living room floor, and various tables and counters had ashtrays sitting stop them that looked like they hadn't been emptied and cleaned in weeks. About half the furniture looked like Ukai had bought it from an Ikea at least six years ago, and the other, nicer half old and worn - like they were gifts from relatives and he hadn't bothered to take care of them.

Takeda looked around the living room for his friend. Nothing. If he came home and started drinking, then he most likely went to the kitchen, Takeda thought as he toed around discarded clothes, traversing the short hallway from the entrance in the living room to Ukai's kitchen.

At first glance, Takeda didn't see him. He saw the open bottle of scotch on the kitchen table, empty glass at its side. One of the chairs had been pulled out slightly, as if someone had stood up without pushing it back in. It was upon looking a little closer that he saw the red of Ukai's jacket under the table. Adrenaline-fueled panic flooded Takeda's system as he ran to the table and threw the chair aside, fearing the worst. Tossing his phone and bag aside as well, he knelt next to Ukai, his breathing ragged and harsh with fear. Ukai was clearly unconscious, lying face down on the linoleum floor. Takeda pressed his fingers to his neck and waited anxiously for a pulse. Normal. He rolled Ukai onto his side with one hand and placed the back of the other one over the coach's mouth and nose. Breathing was also normal.

Good, he thought, He's alive, and he appears to be okay. That means no alcohol poisoning. Probably.

It was in that moment that Ukai's eyelids fluttered to life, slowly revealing the dark irises and bloodshot whites underneath. Takeda pulled his hands back and watched as his friend blinked a few times to clear his vision and bring himself into consciousness. Slowly, Ukai rolled back onto his hands and knees and pushed himself off the floor. As he hoisted himself off the linoleum, he could feel how much heavier and more sluggish it felt to carry his own body weight. His vision blurred again, his stomach lurched into his throat, and without thinking, Ukai promptly vomited onto his kitchen floor.

Takeda felt the acrid stench of vomit hit his nostrils as the disgusting yellow/orange almost-liquid spewed from the coach's mouth. He watched as Ukai emptied the contents of his stomach, taking particular note of the fact that the disgusting mess was, in fact, almost entirely liquid.

"You didn't bother to eat anything first?" Ukai looked up from the floor, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

"No." Silence.

"You didn't answer your phone." Ukai slowly sat up on the floor, still clearly in a bit of a haze. He didn't meet Takeda's eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you always answer your phone. I teach teenage girls who spend less time on their phones." Ukai tried to stand, but faltered, and sat back down on the floor until his head cleared.

"My head is killing me."

"You could be dead, Ukai. You can't drink that recklessly alone. What if I hadn't come over to check on you?" Ukai stood again, leaning on the counter. He opened a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of aspirin and a glass. He filled the glass with water from the sink. Maybe he had some crackers around here somewhere…

"I was fine. I am fine. You didn't need to check on me. Who are you, my mother?"

"If you had given yourself alcohol poisoning, you could have thrown up in your mouth and choked on it. Your gag reflex would have been suppressed. You'd have suffocated and died."

Ukai shook three or four aspirin into his hand and popped them in his mouth, swallowing them with a few gulps of tap water. The crackers had been a no-go. He guessed he’d just have to deal with the nausea until he could get some real food. Setting the glass back onto the counter with a bit too much force, Ukai shuffled around to another part of the counter and pulled a half empty roll of paper towels from its stand. Takeda, noticing what he was doing, moved to stop him.

"Let me do it. You're barely functional." He took the paper towels from Ukai's grasp.

"Maybe I didn't want to be contacted."

"You didn't ignore my calls because you didn't want to be contacted. You ignored my calls because you were passed out drunk." Takeda said as he bent down to clean up the puddle on the floor. Ukai's eyebrows furrowed at the teacher's words.

"What did you expect me to do?"

"I expected you to handle things like an adult. We're not children. The team looks to us to handle adult matters. What would you have wanted me to tell them if I had found you dead in here?"

"Sensei, a kid just died! I spoke with him not more than an hour before they found him!" the coach shouted as he slammed his fist on the table, knocking over the glass and spilling the remainder of the water all over the counter. He sighed, and lowered himself into a kitchen chair, resting his face in his hands. "Every player on the team is going to ask me what we're going to do now that Tsukishima's out of the picture, and I don't have an answer for them. At what point are they old enough to find out that sometimes, there's nothing you can do?"

Takeda's expression was overcome with a mixture of pity and empathy. He knew the team looked up to Ukai much more than they looked up to him, and it had nothing to do with Ukai being a more mature adult, (because honestly, he wasn't). In terms of volleyball, Ukai was their mentor. Takeda often felt that he did nothing more than stand in the background and learn as they did. It was understandable, but it wasn't why Takeda pitied his friend. Takeda pitied his friend because he knew that the way the team looked up to him meant that they would take any and all cues on the matter from Ukai; they trusted him that much - and Ukai wasn't anywhere near mentally stable enough to handle that. He knew that was why Ukai had come straight home from the hospital and tried to drown himself in scotch - because he was just barely older than a kid himself; he probably had people Akiteru's age in his life who he considered to be peers. He was running because he felt like he wasn't qualified to direct a bunch of kids in such serious matters while he still felt like a kid himself. There were teachers on the staff Takeda still felt like that around. It made him wonder - at what age do you stop seeing yourself as a child?

"Sensei..." the coach muttered without looking up from his lap. Maybe it was the fact that, at the moment, Ukai's emotions were particularly vulnerable. Maybe it was because Ukai was hungover and the alcohol was still lowering his inhibitions, but there was an honest pain in the coach's voice that Takeda had never heard before. "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't wanna fuck up their entire future because I handled this the wrong way."

Takeda put down the paper towels, stood from the floor, and sat down in a chair next to his friend.

"How could you handle this the wrong way? What are you afraid of?"

"These kids are already having trouble dealing with their friend just barely surviving a shooting, and as an added bonus, they've lost their chance at Nationals. Sugawara's already going to need months of therapy. Yamaguchi might, too. Tsukishima is going to take months to recover, and that'll be hard on him both physically and mentally - and that's the best case scenario. There's still the chance he could suffer some sort of complication that could slow down his recovery, cripple him for life, or hell, even kill him. If I give any of them the wrong advice, if I don't handle the situation perfectly, I could ruin them."

Takeda paused for a second and thought. It frightened him how easily he could follow Ukai’s train of thought. One small slip could tip the team's delicate mental and emotional balance for the worse, and Ukai was the one they were going to look to for that potential stability. Even so, the team respected him. They would understand that the coach is just a regular human being, right? And besides, there was no guarantee that he would screw it up.

"First of all," he began, trying to choose his words carefully, "There's no guarantee that you'll say the wrong thing. Second of all, they know that this is hard on you, too. Yeah, they're kids, but they're not stupid. I've had plenty of experiences in class where certain students understand way more than I give them credit. I think that as adults, we really tend to underestimate them. It'll be okay. As long as you're honest with them, everything will work out."

"That's your advice? Everything will work out? Things don't just 'work out' because we try really hard."

"Did I say it would be easy? I said it would work out. We're people, and we all have our own little binoculars we use to see our little slice of reality. Communication is important because it means we share the visions from those binoculars to maybe someday get a complete picture. Maybe we can never get there, but we have to keep trying. It's who we are. What I'm saying is, just communicate honestly, and they'll understand."

Ukai and Takeda sat like that for several minutes in mutual silence, settling in their shared turmoil. As the afternoon sunlight flickered through the slight openings in the kitchen blinds, the duo wondered what they would do next. The road would be difficult, they knew, but at least neither of them would have to go through it alone.

* * *

Yamaguchi felt the blinding sunlight assault his eyes, burning the backs of his eyelids and startling him into consciousness. Throwing his arm over his face, he slowly pried his eyes open, using his forearm to shield them from the light. The blurry image of Sugawara's bedroom came into view as he blinked and rubbed the crusted mucus out of the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand. Finally sitting up, he looked at his phone. It was just coming up on 2:52pm. They'd slept for six hours? Seven? Yamaguchi wasn't entirely sure.

I hoped I'd feel more rested, he thought as he tried to ignore the migraine growing in the back of his head. Instead of feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of his day, he was groggy, and every joint in his body ached like he'd just been hit by a garbage truck. The emotional weight of the night before hit him hard and fast, like a mound of bricks dropping onto his shoulders with all the abruptness of a collapsing building. His breath hitched in his chest, and everything inside him felt like a thousand tiny explosions, all doing their damage to the organs within. Akiteru was dead, Tsukki was halfway there himself... it was nothing short of agony. And not to mention that migraine...

I should take something for that. Maybe have a glass of water. Yamaguchi was about to stand from his seated position on the air mattress when he turned and saw Sugawara on the bed beside him, still asleep. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully until, like a lightning strike, his face flipped from a tranquil slumber to one of anguish and unease. The setter's eyebrows furrowed, he pulled his knees into his chest under the blanket and shivered. As Yamaguchi watched, he could swear to a faint whimpering that could only be coming from his sleeping teammate.

He's having a nightmare, probably about last night. In an effort to shake Sugawara from his nightmare, Yamaguchi stood from the air mattress and stepped onto the floor beside his teammate's bed. Reaching out, he pulled the blanket from Sugawara's shoulders and shook him.

"Suga!" he called in somewhat of a harsh whisper, "Suga, you've gotta wake up. You're having a bad dream!"

Sugawara flew up from the bed, startling Yamaguchi into taking a step or two back. His eyes were wide, and a cold sweat had broken on his face. He sat in place, pupils wide and frozen, staring into nothingness for several seconds. Yamaguchi watched as Sugawara's breathing slowed from a quick rasping to a normal, controlled pace. Once he was sure his teammate had recovered from his shock, he began to speak.

"Suga? Suga, are you okay?" Sugawara turned to look at Yamaguchi, his eyes still wide with fear. Though his gaze was still far away, he was much more coherent than he was a several short seconds ago. He spoke with a small, far-off voice.

"Yeah... bad dream..." Yamaguchi sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Wanna talk about it?" His teammate's surprise finally eased as his he let his head drop between his knees, covering the back of his head with his hands and knotting his fingers in his silver hair.

"No..." He answered in a weary voice, "No, I don't wanna talk about it." Just then -

_Ding._

Yamaguchi turned to look at his phone. There was a message in the group chat. He picked it up from the air mattress and unlocked it with a quick swipe of his finger. Upon further inspection, he found that the message was from their team captain.

"Hey, check your phone. Daichi just sent a message around to the team chat." At Yamaguchi's request, Sugawara took his own cell phone from beside his pillow and checked the message as well. It read as follows:

_TeamDad: Hey, guys. I know we had a rough day today, but since coach isn't holding practice, I'm going putting together a trip to the hospital to see Tsukishima instead. I already cleared everything with his mother, but I need drivers. Does anyone have any ideas? Tanaka, your sister?_

Yamaguchi turned to Sugawara.

"Hey, could your mom take us?" The setter shook his head.

"Sorry, our car's not working. What about your mom?" This time, it was Yamaguchi's turn to decline.

"I'd, uh, rather not bother my mom anymore today. She can be a little moody, and she's still worried about my dad..."

"Right, sorry. I forgot." _Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding._ More messages.

_Dad2.0: Have you tried coach or Takeda-sensei?_

_TeamDad: I tried both. Coach didn't pick up his phone, and Sensei wasn't in his office when I checked after class._

_BallsyBaldy: I can try to ask Saeko, but she's been a mess since this morning. I'll call her and let you know._

_TeamDad: Anyway, anyone who wants to come along, meet me in the gym in about ten minutes. We'll gather there and see how many drivers we need._

Yamaguchi and Sugawara both watched the messages appear on their screens one after another with a look of mild surprise. What had Daichi meant when he said they'd ‘had a rough day’? Were they simply exhausted and depressed after last night? Or had someone found out about the incident and caused their teammates trouble? Neither of the boys knew, and in a weird way, they were pretty afraid to find out. How could things have possibly gotten any worse in the time that they'd been asleep?

In the end, Daichi was able to call Takeda to get him to drive them to the hospital, and Tanaka was able to pull Saeko out of her funk enough to convince her to drive as well. Yamaguchi packed up his stuff as Sugawara got himself together, and together the two boys said goodbye to Sugawara's mother and walked back to the school, where they would willingly endure the memory of what happened all over again.


	22. Chapter 22

It didn't come as a surprise to Daichi that the entire team, including those who were absent from school, met at the gym that day to visit Tsukishima. With all the chaos unfolding around them, the Karasuno Boys Volleyball Team had never been so divided. Each individual player was trying to survive on his own, like a colony of ants scattering at the first drop of rain. Daichi knew that if he let this trainwreck go any further, it might be impossible to reconcile everyone again. Trauma was a tricky beast. He just hoped that his plan would work - that getting everyone in the same room and letting them see Tsukishima for themselves would remind them of the reason their camaraderie was important. Daichi pondered this dilemma in the gym for a while, watching his teammates mill around until they were ready to depart. Once Takeda and Saeko showed up, the team piled into cars and left for the hospital.

Nobody except Sugawara and Yamaguchi really knew what to expect walking into Tsukishima's hospital room. A few of them had seen people in hospitals once or twice before, but none of them had ever seen someone who had been shot, especially someone their own age. As they walked through the sickly, off-white halls to the ICU, Ennoshita did Yamaguchi the service of filling him in on the day's troubles - the fighting, the rumors, the online articles - everything. Yamaguchi peered over to Sugawara every so often as Ennoshita explained, wondering how his senpai was reacting to the whole mess, but it quickly became apparent that Sugawara wasn't even listening. He simply kept his gaze on the ground as he walked, just barely avoiding colliding with doctors, nurses, and medicine carts. Yamaguchi on the other hand was horrified. He almost couldn't believe things had gotten that bad. Ennoshita had just finished his tale when they finally reached Tsukishima's room.

Amaya greeted them wearily, but kindly as they entered the room one by one with Daichi holding up the rear. The team parted as the captain made his way to the front of the group. Standing directly in front of Amaya, he bowed as the rest of the team quickly followed suit.

"Mrs. Tsukishima. On behalf of the Karasuno Boys' Volleyball Club, we're very sorry for your loss."

Amaya teared up at the team's display of respect. She took Daichi by the shoulders and pulled him into a hug.

"Thank-you, honey," she whispered gratefully in his ear, "It's been a tough day."

Little by little the team straightened themselves out and turned to Tsukishima, sedated in the hospital bed in front of them. A hush fell over the room, every pair of eyes glued to the injured player. Before the silence could deepen, Amaya cleared her throat and excused herself.

"Well, I'm going to give you boys some time alone with Kei. If you need me, I'll be down in the cafeteria." The team murmured a chorus of thank-you's as Amaya quietly left the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

For several seconds after her exit, the room's energy fell flat on the floor, replaced with a growing tension. Not one person spoke. No one - not even Takeda - could pull their eyes from the unconscious Tsukishima. After the metaphorical dumpster fire that was the team meeting the night before and the storm that fanned the flames throughout the school day, this was the first time anyone other than Yamaguchi and Sugawara had seen physical proof of the event that nearly killed their teammate.

The first thing Yamaguchi noticed upon turning his attention to his fallen friend was the plastic tube that was conspicuously absent from the blocker's mouth, the machine it was connected to missing as well. In place of the large, cumbersome breathing tube was a much smaller, thinner one that hooked around his friend's ears and came to rest at his nose. It seemed to be connected to what looked like an oxygen tank as well. Yamaguchi remembered seeing this particular equipment in the medical dramas his mom watched all the time, but he'd never really learned what it was called. He did remember that it was supposed to give a patient with breathing problems extra oxygen to help them breathe more easily, which had to be a step above his needing the ventilator this morning. It had to mean Tsukki was getting better.

"That's different." The room turned to look at him.

"What do you mean?" Narita asked, his voice quiet.

"He was on a ventilator this morning... there was a tube down his throat - the machine was breathing for him. He's just on oxygen now, so I guess the doctors decided his lungs were stable enough for him to breathe on his own."

Reactions to the pinch server's words varied more in kind than intensity. The most obvious were those of Takeda, Ennoshita, Kinnoshita, and Narita, who were overcome with both pity and empathy. Asahi paled, his lip quivering ever so slightly as he stood with Nishinoya, who looked more angry than anything else. Tanaka and his sister Saeko stood together, taking in the sight as a pair. Saeko wore an uncharacteristic look of mourning, while Tanaka stood furious at her side, giving off the aura of a protector. It made Yamaguchi wonder if the siblings' current emotions were a reaction to Tsukki's injury, or Akiteru's death. Hinata's reaction was a simple one. He just stared, brows furrowed and focused, like the whole situation was a game to be won, an obstacle to be overcome. Maybe thinking of everything in terms of volleyball was just what he needed to do. Maybe it was the only way Hinata could cope. Daichi, always the leader, kept his stone-faced captain's facade as his team struggled in front of him. Though, Yamaguchi could tell - in the way his eyes softened and his mouth turned at a funny angle - Daichi was having just as much trouble keeping it together as the rest of the team.

However, there were two reactions that worried Yamaguchi the most. The first was Kageyama's. It was no secret that Tsukki and Kageyama didn't get along, but Kageyama wasn't a bad guy - he'd never wish harm on anyone. It made Yamaguchi wonder what Kageyama was thinking right now, seeing someone he fought with so often so helpless in front of him. As he studied his teammate's face, he saw some of the same anger he found in Tanaka's. However, mixed in was a very slight, but very present hint of guilt. But why would Kageyama feel guilty? He had nothing to do with the incident that caused Tsukki's injury; he didn't even know about it until it was all over. Was it possible that Kageyama, who had no experience distinguishing and expressing his emotions, who never considered the consequences of his own actions, felt guilty over his and Tsukki's feud? Yamaguchi considered anything that brought out such a raw vulnerability in Kageyama a rare opportunity. Maybe today, Kageyama would mature.

The second worrying reaction was Sugawara's. Staring intently at Tsukishima's unconscious form, he looked like he felt absolutely nothing. Sugawara had been little more than a zombie since they'd woken up that afternoon, and Yamaguchi could tell by looking at him that his empty expression was not due to just exhaustion. Before they'd fallen asleep, Sugawara had cut off any attempt Yamaguchi had made to talk about the ordeal they had experienced, and he could tell that his teammate was very quickly moving from "emotional basket case" to "completely shutting down". He knew if he didn't pull Suga out of it quickly, it would be much harder for the setter to learn from the experience and move on.

"So... I guess I'll be the one to ask." Takeda started nervously, nearly choking on the weight of the silence, "Where was he shot?"

The room turned to Takeda, and then to Yamaguchi and Sugawara expectantly. Yamaguchi looked tentatively at Sugawara beside him, since he had actually seen it happen, but realizing that Sugawara wasn't even paying attention, Yamaguchi answered instead.

"It was his liver... The bullet broke one of his ribs going in and got stuck in his liver. The pieces of bone that broke off... they put holes in his lung. If you wanna know anything else, though, Sugawara could answer more than I could."

Yamaguchi realized that the only thing Sugawara knew more about was the incident itself, but by turning the team's attention to the vice captain, he hoped to get his friend alert and talking. Unfortunately for both of them, that didn't seem to be the case. As the team once again turned their focus to Sugawara, the silver-haired setter simply stood there and ignored them. Yamaguchi doubted whether he even saw all the eyes focused in his direction, or if all he saw was the kid whose life was hanging in the balance in front of him.

"Um... Suga?" Asahi asked warily in an attempt to get his teammate's attention. No reaction. Daichi stepped closer and reached out to grab his friend's shoulder, but before he, or anyone else could coax Sugawara into conscious awareness, Kageyama, with one furious glance in his senpai's direction, marched over to him, took his collar in his balled fists, and shook him violently. Sugawara simply let his teammate push him around as he pleased, lacking the energy and motivation to do anything to stop him.

"Hey, we're talking to you!" Kageyama shouted, "Or don't we matter anymore?" Daichi placed a firm grip on Kageyama's arm.

"That's enough! Didn't you learn anything from last night? Or school today?"

As Kageyama snapped his head around to look at his captain, a thousand emotions passed over the setter's face - everything from anger to grief to shame and back. He found himself wondering why he was lashing out like this. Did it even matter? Every time Kageyama tried to look inside himself to figure out the reasoning behind his problems all he found was the emptiness of an abyss staring back at him. It was like a black hole of intense emotion, and every time Kageyama tried to brave the darkness, he was sucked back up inside the enormous pressure of all the feelings he refused to deal with. _It's easier this way,_ he thought as he watched Sugawara's emotionless face so close to his own, _It's easier to shut everything out._

Pretty soon he felt another, smaller hand seize the back of his shirt. From behind him he heard shouting in Hinata's unmistakable voice.

"Stop it! Sugawara didn't do anything!"

"He's right," Ennoshita chimed in, "Besides, if you guys keep screaming like this, security's going to kick us out."

But Kageyama didn't relent. Frozen in place with his teammate's collar twisted through his fingers, he continued to seethe, gripping the cloth of Sugawara's shirt so tightly his knuckles glowed a vibrant white. Daichi kept trying to get his attention, but the effort was futile. No matter what he said or how loudly he said it, Kageyama was completely stiff and unmoving, beyond listening to reason. It was at that point Daichi began to truly worry. If there was one thing his time as the volleyball team's captain taught him, it was that he was very good at corralling the players, especially if they were being particularly uncooperative and he needed to use the full force of his voice to shut them up and convince them to pay attention. As difficult as Kageyama was to handle when he was riled up, he was never immune to a good old fashioned scolding. The fact that Daichi had suddenly found himself unable to control Kageyama's ridiculous temper meant that the setter had fallen even further into whatever bottomless pit of emotion Tsukishima's tragedy had sent him spiraling into. The bottom line was, Kageyama was losing his grip, and it scared Daichi. A lot.

Their fight was broken up by a small, unsuspecting nurse. Barely larger than Yachi, a young woman threw open the door, silencing the whole team.

"What's going on in here?" she asked, angry, yet professional. The bulk of the team, with the exception of Sugawara and Kageyama, bowed deeply in apology.

"W-we're very sorry," Takeda stammered, "We'll keep it down."

"Good, thank-you." the nurse responded, "The patients in this hospital need their peace and quiet to recover. If I or another one of the nurses hears you again, you'll all have to leave."

"Yes, of course." Daichi muttered. With another quick nod, the nurse left the room, shutting the door behind her. After the nurse had gone, Daichi noticed Takeda's face change. His expression quickly flipped from a meek apology to a stern teacher, a role that, while fairly obvious, none of them had really seen too often.

"Kageyama."

"Takeda-sensei..."

It was in that moment the whole team realized that none of them had ever really heard their teacher scold someone before. Usually when they misbehaved Coach Ukai was around to take up the task instead. The mild-mannered literature teacher usually never so much as raised his voice. Hearing him say Kageyama's name so firmly, though his voice wasn't nearly as booming as Daichi's, was a whole other kind of deafening.

"Would you please step into the hallway with me for a minute?"

The sheer level of calm in the teacher's voice frightened Kageyama in a way he had never felt before. He suddenly stopped in his tracks and turned toward the teacher, releasing Sugawara's collar and letting him fall to the floor. Takeda nodded in acknowledgement and left the room, not pausing to see if the troublesome student was following him. Kageyama, faint surprise peeking through his furious exterior, slowly followed his teacher's footsteps.

The soft click of the door's latch snapped the team out of its stupor. Daichi turned to a still silent Sugawara and extended his hand in an offer to help him to his feet. Sugawara accepted the offer numbly, mechanically standing as his teammates looked on with deep concern.

"Suga, are you okay?" Daichi asked, his friend's hand still clutched tightly in his own. For the first time Sugawara really seemed to see him, and he answered accordingly.

"...Yeah... um... sorry."

In a sudden burst of effort, Karasuno's vice captain yanked his hand out of Daichi's grip and took off through the hospital room door.

* * *

"Kageyama, why don't you tell me what's going on?" Takeda asked as he meandered around the hospital gift shop. It was a rather cramped shop, with small wooden shelves built into white walls to make enough room for the only two round stainless steel clothing hangers the place could hold. There were several different kinds of items stocked from the floor to the ceiling: t-shirts and sweaters that bore the Miyagi General Hospital logo, stuffed animals with "get well soon" sewn into their fur, and an entire wall dedicated to nothing but Hallmark cards, in various shapes and colors.

"There's nothing going on." Kageyama replied moodily as he tried fruitlessly to avoid the teacher in the tiny space. He found himself playing thoughtlessly with a little key-chain he picked up out of a plastic bin on a shelf. He twirled the metal ring around his finger, oddly comforted by steady movement.

"Kageyama," Takeda tried again, pushing his way past a display of sweatshirts to reach his student, "You came very close to hurting Sugawara. And don't think Mrs. Nakada didn't tell me about your outburst in her class. There's clearly something wrong."

The dark-haired setter remained silent, catching the little key-chain in his hand and squeezing it firmly.

"I understand you all are upset about Nationals. Is that what's eating you?" Kageyama whipped his head around in surprise. For a fleeting moment he was angry with himself. Why should he be surprised that Takeda-sensei knew that was what was bothering him? He'd only been shouting about it for the last twelve hours. Then he was angry with Takeda-sensei himself. What right did the teacher have to just brazenly display Kageyama's problems out of nowhere? He never gave him permission to call him out. Finally, the anger settled into a dull simmer, and Kageyama tried to push his words through the emotional block in his brain.

"No!" He thought for a second. "Well... I mean... Yeah, but..." Takeda put his hand gently on the teenager's shoulder.

"It's okay to not know what you're feeling, you know," he said, "You're a teenager, and this is a difficult time for all of us. Not knowing what's going on inside your head is completely normal." Kageyama met Takeda's gaze for the first time and absorbed the kindness and understanding he found within it. Maybe... maybe that abyss wasn't as dark as he'd feared.

"I..." he stammered, "I feel... bad." Takeda shifted his expression to one of intrigue.

"Bad how?" Kageyama's brow furrowed as he looked down. Takeda could almost see the cogs turning inside the teen's mind, putting together his feelings as laboriously as a map-maker. It was like watching someone struggle to speak another language.

"When I see Tsukishima lying there I get... angry. But not angry at him, like when we're fighting. I get angry at myself."

"Do you know why? You didn't do anything to put him in the hospital like this." Kageyama thought some more. He turned the key-chain over in his fingers again, more slowly this time, in an effort to ease his thinking.

"I... I don't know. I just think about him getting hurt and I just wanna punch something!" he squeezed the key-chain with all his might, fearful for a moment that he might break it. "If I had a dummy of myself I'd tear it to pieces!"

Takeda listened to Kageyama's explanation with genuine surprise. Was he... guilty? Guilty over how he and Tsukishima have fought these last months? He couldn't imagine that Kageyama had ever actively wanted something bad to happen Tsukishima, but he'd had experiences in his own life where thoughts of that nature pop up unexpectedly, like weeds. Of course nobody ever wanted something bad to happen to someone else, but in the split second before you catch yourself, you find you do wish harm on them, especially if they'd hurt you in the past. If Kageyama had experienced thoughts like this, then the guilt made sense. If he'd wished every so often that maybe something bad would happen to Tsukishima, just enough to teach him a lesson, of course he would feel guilty when it actually happened.

"Kageyama... is it possible that you feel guilty for what happened to Tsukishima?" The teen's reaction was just as angry and hostile as Takeda imagined it would be. He broke away from the teacher's reach and stomped over to one of the hangers, fingering through t-shirts.

"No! I'm not guilty!"

But as soon as the words left the setter's mouth, they both knew - Kageyama deep in his heart, and Takeda clearly on his face - it was a lie. And that brought them back to his fight with Sugawara. Sugawara showed little to no emotion back in the room, and with the myriad of emotions Kageyama was feeling right now - his guilt, his anger over Nationals - even as they speak, there was the possibility that Kageyama felt insulted that Sugawara didn't seem to be feeling his guilt as harshly as Kageyama was.

"You know," the teacher began without looking at his student, "Sugawara's having just as hard of a time dealing with this as you are."

"What do you mean?" Kageyama asked with more than a hint of sass.

"I mean that grief isn't a competition. You're both allowed to process your emotions differently." Takeda turned to follow Kageyama to his position by the t-shirts. "Try to understand what Sugawara went through. He saw everything happen. He saw the shot. He saw the blood. He saw the chaos it caused. It was undoubtedly overwhelming. Right now, in order to cope with what he saw, his brain needs to shut down his emotions. That's normal. It doesn't mean he's having an easier time with this than you are. Now I'm going out on a limb here, but is it possible that you subconsciously directed your guilt at Sugawara because you thought he should be the one feeling guilty for shutting down?"

Kageyama froze and turned to his teacher with unmistakable surprise.

"I... how...?"

"I teach literature, Kageyama. The human condition is the basic subject of every story every written. When you've read as much as I have, you learn a few things about how people work." He looked down at Kageyama's hands.

"You want me to get that for you? You seemed to be attached to it."

Kageyama realized he was still clutching the key-chain.

"Uh... sure. Thanks." The two made their way to the checkout counter. Kageyama didn't realize it until Takeda pointed it out, but the key-chain he had grabbed without thinking, that he'd been turning in his hands all this time, bore the image of two people holding hands and smiling deeply at each other. Etched into the artwork was one word:

Forgiveness.

* * *

"Koushi, honey, what are you doing here?"

Sugawara slowly approached the soft-haired woman nursing a cup of coffee in the hospital cafeteria. The first thing he noticed was how exhausted Amaya looked. Clear dark circles hung under her eyes. Her makeup had been touched up, but sloppily, as if she had done it with whatever she had in her purse without care. She was still wearing her clothes from yesterday, an obvious sign that she hadn't gone home. And there was, of course, the unmistakable pain in her gaze, the pain of a mother whose son was taken from her far too soon.

_A parent should never have to bury their own child, Koushi._

The sudden memory of the night before hit him like a freight train. Was it just last night? Everything had bled together so much, Sugawara could hardly tell. When Amaya had spoken those words to him, sitting in her bathroom cleaning the fresh wounds on his knuckles, she had been talking about herself and Tsukishima. As fate would have it, the child she would bury would not be Tsukishima, but Akiteru instead. He wondered if she'd realized the irony of it all, or if she was still too engrossed in her agony to give it much thought. _Hell, she's been awake for a day and a half,_ Sugawara mused, _I wonder if she's thinking clearly at all._

Sugawara approached her table without answering her question. He couldn't seem to bring his voice to his lips. He'd tried, but somewhere along the line it had just gotten... stuck. Sitting down across from her, he noticed the coffee in her cup, an exact replica of the mediocre cardboard/plastic one he'd gotten the night before. The only difference was the liquid it contained. Sugawara could tell - there hadn't been an ounce of cream or sugar anywhere near the steaming black beverage. Having followed Sugawara's gaze and realizing that he wasn't going to answer her first question, Amaya made conversation instead.

"I don't usually take it black," she said, "but I feel like I'm about to fall over, so I'll try anything to keep me on my feet."

"Why don't you go home and get some sleep? Tsukishima's stable."

"Oh, Koushi," she murmured, brushing his silver bangs out of his eyes, "Someday you'll understand. When you grow up and have children, you'll understand."

"Mrs. Tsukishima," Sugawara began, playing with a loose string on his t-shirt, "Last night you told me, 'A parent should never have to bury their child'... I know you were saying it to keep me from wishing this whole mess had happened to me instead, but I was wondering... how are you so... I don't know... calm, I guess? I mean, after everything that happened, I feel like I'm drifting away. How are you still... normal?"

Amaya let out a deep sigh as she brought her coffee to her lips and took an eager sip. She could tell Sugawara was slipping, losing his grip on his reality. He was vulnerable, and he needed someone to give him a direction, to give him meaning. But how could Amaya possibly give him any direction when she was just barely afloat as it was? At Sugawara's age and in his position, he needed gentleness; he needed to be treated with kiddie gloves. But when the gentle answers weren't available, what were you supposed to say to a kid on the brink of total emotional collapse?

"Koushi, this may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but I don't have all the answers." And she meant it honestly, without a hint of sarcasm. "I'm only just barely holding it together."

"Then what do I do? If you can't do it, what about me?" Setting her coffee cup on the table, Amaya reached across and lifted Sugawara's hands from underneath it. Setting them on the table's surface, she took them inside her own.

"Listen, honey. One day you're going to learn that there isn't a single person on Earth who knows exactly what they're doing all the time. I understand this is going to be hard to accept, but not even adults have all the answers. That's one of the first things you learn as you grow into adulthood, Koushi." Sugawara became overcome with the first strong emotion he'd experienced all day. He pulled his hands away from Amaya's and turned away as tears formed in his eyes. Amaya continued as if reading his mind.

"You don't need to be embarrassed," she said, taking another sip of her coffee, "It's a hard thing to accept. What you need to remember is that you have friends and family who will be right by your side. But tell me, why is this coming up now? I thought you were upstairs with the team visiting Kei."

"I, uh, had some problems. I... don't really wanna talk about it." Amaya nodded slowly, pondering the young man's situation. The easiest answer was to assume he'd gotten into a fight with someone. He didn't seem to be injured, but maybe it was more of an argument than an actual fight. Amaya knew it'd be impossible to know without Sugawara telling her outright, and she'd had enough experience with Kei's mood swings to know that if he really didn't want to tell her, it just wasn't going to happen.

"It's important to remember that your friends are having a hard time with this, same as you are. If they lash out at you, just remember that their emotions are just as valid as yours."

Sugawara met Amaya's gaze and smiled faintly.

"Thanks, Mrs. Tsukishima. I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Absolutely, Koushi. Now run along back upstairs with your friends. I'm sure they're worried about you." Sugawara nodded, stood from his chair, and left the cafeteria.


	23. Chapter 23

By ten o'clock that night, Amaya found herself wondering how she had been able to keep herself awake this long. It had been almost two days and every cell in her body felt like it was made of lead, her eyelids heavier with each passing second. But she couldn't give in. She couldn't sleep. _He'll be taken from me,_ she brooded, eyes glued to her son's heart monitor, _I'll close my eyes, and he won't be there when I open them again._

The hospital was quickly returning to the way it looked the night before. The bright natural sunlight that had filled her son's room earlier in the day, so intense that Amaya had to close the blinds to keep herself from getting a migraine, had been replaced by the artificial white light from the hospital's fluorescent bulbs. The room glowed unnaturally, and it reminded Amaya of a fever dream, a world just a little too bright to be real.

_The worst part is that you can see the shadows_. Amaya hated that. The fluorescent bulbs glowed so obnoxiously that she could see every tiny shadow all over the room. As she continued to stare at Kei, she studied those shadows - every bruise: the gaunt purple ones that filled the hollows of his eyes, the tender circular one that blossomed where the doctors had given him his IVs. She saw the tall thin shadow cast by the post holding his IV bags, the large expansive one cast by the underside of his bed, all the different shapes attached to Kei's medical equipment, black and bleeding into each other, creating one solid mass of shadow in that corner of the room. It reminded Amaya of a horror movie, as if some unknown creature would climb out of the darkness and claim her son before her eyes.

Feeling a sudden spike in her fear, Amaya pulled into herself. Folding her knees and bringing her feet up onto the chair with her, she wrapped her arms around them and buried her face in their darkness as white hot tears tore down her cheeks for the umpteenth time. Raising her head slightly, she reached into her purse and removed her treasured photo of Kei and Akiteru as young children. Holding it firmly in her shaking hands, she watched as her tears fell onto the plastic lamination, delicately obscuring the image.

"I'm glad that's the one we decided to keep."

Amaya whipped her head around to the room's entrance to find her husband Yoshirou, clad in a slightly rumpled suit, carrying both a briefcase and rolling a carry-on bag, standing in the doorway to greet her. Too shocked to move, Amaya simply sat and stared at her husband as he crossed the room and set his stuff on the floor. He shrugged off his suit jacket, draped it over the back of the chair, and sat down beside her. Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, he continued to speak.

"The picture, I mean. I'm glad that's the take we kept. If you remember, we'd been trying all afternoon to get a good photo, but it just wasn't happening. Akiteru had gotten into the sodas earlier, so he was on too much of a sugar rush to sit still. And Kei had just discovered he could move around on his own, so anytime we sat him somewhere, he turned and crawled in the other direction." Pausing the story, he chuckled lightly at the memory.

Amaya snuggled into her husband's embrace as he reminisced. Just having him there, hearing his voice, somehow made everything a little more bearable.

"I remember," she said, eyes focused on the photo, "Luckily, Kei was teething at the time, and I finally had the idea to get him to sit still by giving him his dinosaur toy to chew on. You were upset because it was covered in bite marks and slobber and you didn't want it in the picture. If I remember correctly, your reasoning was that you wanted a 'nice' picture."

"Yep. And you insisted on giving it to him anyway."

"And I was right. It worked. Kei was content long enough for us to take the picture, and Akiteru got so excited; he thought it was the cutest thing in the world."

"And it turned out to be the best childhood picture we got of them. Who knew something so simple would last all this time?"

Yoshioru smiled faintly as he lost himself in the memory. As he thought, his expression took a dark turn as he stood up from his chair and approached Kei's bedside. He reached out and ran his fingers down his son's arm, stopping at the IV lines taped to his wrist. Reaching up a second time, he took a small amount of his son's hair into his hand, brushing his forehead and letting his hand follow the lines of his face. How could this have happened to such an innocent boy? His son? When he spoke again, his voice was heavier, thicker with emotion.

"So, what happened? What did they tell you?"

Amaya stood from her chair and joined Yoshirou at their son's bedside, explaining what the doctor told them about the bullet's path and the damage it had done. As she recounted the information, staring agonizingly at her son's unconscious form, Amaya was not surprised to find herself crying once again. Every glance at Kei's helpless, fragile body tore open the wound that had been trying desperately to heal over the course of the last twenty-four hours. The grieving mother couldn't help but to feel weighed down, almost magnetized to the floor by the solid mass of lead that seemed to be sitting in her chest every time her mind wondered to last night's plight. Kei was in a massive amount of pain, struggling to keep what hold he did have on his young life. Akiteru was dead, crudely stolen from her at the height of her fear. Perhaps all her life, Amaya Tsukishima had been naive, and it took this frigid, tragic slap in the face to teach her that as much as you loved life, life was under no obligation to love you back.

"Oh my god..." Yoshirou muttered, running his hand over his face and taking in a deep breath, "Did they tell you anything else? What they were going to do now?"

"They said they were going to keep him under sedation for twenty-four hours after the surgery, which means they're going to wake him up tomorrow morning. Other than that... no... not really." Yoshirou was silent for a few seconds.

"They might be waiting until he's awake to explain the recovery process. Did you have any problems with the insurance forms?" Amaya looked away.

"No... everything was fine."

"I see."

Yoshirou paused and left Kei's bedside, wandering over to the window. He grabbed the cords dangling from the blinds and pulled, opening them and letting a touch of moonlight caress the edges of the window. Amaya turned to watch him, absorbing the sullen nature of his aura. It was a something she had experienced from Yoshirou time and time again: swallowed by his inability to deal with his own emotions, her husband did not want her to follow him. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke.

"... Did Akiteru have life insurance?"

It was like a punch to the stomach. Amaya couldn't believe her ears.

"Your son _dies_ , and _that's_ all you have to say!?" Yoshirou's voice became noticeably more strained.

"Amaya, it's an important question. Funerals are expensive, and we don't have the extra cash. Kei's insurance will cover the bulk of this mess, but not all of it, so we'll have his medical bills to think about as well, not to mention the charges for whatever procedures they did for Akiteru."

Amaya was outraged. After waiting for him all day, wishing he could be here so she could talk to her husband and share their grief, wallowing in her agony all day without rest, the only thing he was worried about was _money._

"How in the hell am I supposed to know if he had life insurance? What twenty-two year old thinks about life insurance?"

"Some workplaces offer it upon hiring," Yoshirou stressed as he turned around to face his wife, "I just wanted to know if Akiteru's job did."

"I don't know! Funny enough, it never occurred to me to ask. I never thought I'd lose him before he graduated college!" Amaya shouted as her voice shook. She hadn't felt these tears coming, they had simply sprung to the surface mid-thought. There was a very conscious part of her brain that was completely unbelieving of her current situation. She never believed that she would be arguing with her husband over the validity of their son's death. She just couldn't imagine how he could be so focused on money when the lives of their children were a much more pressing matter. It was infuriating, and it made her feel completely alone.

"Can you settle down for one minute? I'm trying to make sure this doesn't put us on the street."

Yoshirou had always been a very restrained man, but even now Amaya's emotional outburst was trying his patience. Why couldn't she see that he was trying to save their family, that dwelling on their emotions wasn't going to get them anywhere?

"Does money have to be so important right now? I'm trying to grieve our child! You haven't said one thing about his death since you walked in here! Do you even care!?"

It was in that moment that Yoshirou lost his temper. As the words left Amaya's lips, she saw the switch flip behind his eyes. There was a burning fury there now - She had definitely crossed the line. As Amaya began to recognize the magnitude of her mistake, Yoshirou bounded back towards her, stopping inches from her face. His voice started eerily calm, but quickly grew in volume and emotion until he was shouting.

"Say whatever you want about my priorities or my personality, but never, ever, tell me that I don't care about my son! Do you think that twelve hour flight was easy for me? Knowing that my son was lying dead on the other side of the world and my wife was barely holding herself together? Do you think there was even one second where I wasn't grieving Akiteru? You aren't the only one who lost someone last night, Amaya! Don't think that because I'm not a blubbering mess, it means that I feel nothing." Now crying violently, Amaya could hardly get her words out.

"Then stop talking about money and _grieve_ with me! Help me carry this burden because I've been doing it alone all day, and I need my husband to hold me together because _I can't do it anymore!_ "

Overcome with an intense sympathy, Yoshirou opened his arms and took his wife of thirty years into his embrace, letting her collapse, crying sniveling, into his chest. As he felt her hands wrap around his back and clutch his shirt, he buried his face in her hair and stood still for a moment, inhaling her scent. He couldn't smell the rich strawberry scent of the shampoo she'd worn everyday since she was in high school, evidence that she hadn't been home to shower. _She's been here all day, then. She probably didn't think to bring anything with her to change or refresh herself._

It wasn't like that surprised him at all. Amaya had always been a woman of strong convictions. She wasn't loud or forceful by nature, but she was kind, gentle, and most of all stubborn, especially when it came to her sons. Her kindness and her gentleness were her strongest traits because they were what made her an excellent mother, and the stubborn undertones of her personality meant that there was nothing she wouldn't do for her children. If Yoshirou was being honest with himself, it was why he fell for her in the first place - never abrasive but never yielding, he knew from the moment he laid eyes on her that if she could ever love him, she would be loyal to the very last. Refreshing, yet strong like the nighttime rains she was named after, Amaya's love could move mountains.

Yoshirou turned his attention back to his wife's shaking, sobbing frame and held her just a little bit tighter, knotting his fingers in her hair and massaging the back of her head. The fact that she was so severely rattled now was a sure sign of the frayed state of her nerves. How long had she been awake?

"Yoshirou..." she cried, her voice muffled by the fabric of her husband's dress shirt, "I miss Akiteru. I miss our little boy."

"I miss him, too, Amaya."

"I'm sorry I accused you of not loving him. I'm just so... empty. It's all too much. It's just all too much..." Her voice trailed off into more heart-wrenching sobs. Gently, Yoshirou guided her back to their chairs and sat down with her, letting her press herself into him and continue to sob into his chest. He let her cry herself out, waiting until she'd calmed down before speaking again.

"When was the last time you ate? Would you like me to grab something for you from the cafeteria?" She shook her head.

"No, I don't want food. I can't eat. Thinking of food makes me nauseous." As Amaya answered, Yoshirou noticed the sheer exhaustion dripping from her voice. That combined with her hyperactive nerves worried him more than he was used to.

"Okay," He paused, "Have you slept since you called me last?" When Amaya answered she sounded almost defensive.

"How could I? With everything that's happened, I had to keep an eye on Kei."

Yoshirou sighed. He had a feeling she would say something like that. With how stubborn she was, combined with her abounding love for their family, it was no surprise that Amaya would insist on overseeing their younger son's recovery entirely on her own, without rest.

"You haven't slept in two days? Amaya, you need sleep." This comment seemed to agitate her, and she tore herself from Yoshirou's embrace, facing him.

"You don't understand! What if something happens?"

"If something happens, the doctors will take care of it and let us know." But Yoshirou could tell from his wife's expression that it didn't matter. If her own two eyes weren't watching their son, then as far as she was concerned, he wasn't being watched.

"Yoshirou, I can't. I refuse. I'm not going to leave again! Not again!"

And that was when it sunk in. She wasn't just scared. She was traumatized.

"You can't blame yourself for Akiteru's death. It wasn't your fault. You could never have known." But Amaya was hysterical again. She was crying, and her voice jumped from a tremulous whisper to a petrified shout.

"I left for thirty minutes! Why did I choose then to run home? If I had just stayed I could have caught it before it happened. If I had just been there, I could have gotten a doctor at the first sign that something was wrong!"

"Amaya, there was no way you could have known that something was going to go wrong while you were gone."

"I abandoned him!" she shrieked, her hands balled into shaking fists, the anger and hurt welling up in her chocolate brown eyes, "At the moment he needed me the most I left him!" Yoshirou stood from his sitting position and took Amaya by the shoulders, making her face him.

"You didn't abandon anybody. You left to get Kei's insurance card, right? So you could fill out his forms?"

"So?"

"You were taking care of your younger son. Your attention was on Kei because at that moment, Kei was the one who needed it. You had no reason to believe that something would happen to Akiteru last night because there was no indication. Amaya, it was a freak accident. That's what the doctor told you, didn't he? That he mistimed doses? It could have happened to anybody, but it happened to us. That's the way life is."

He paused, taking the time to reach up and brush a few strands of fly away hair from her face, tucking it behind her left ear. God, she was beautiful. Even with ruined makeup, greasy hair, and worry lines from years of dealing with their struggles, Amaya was still the most radiant woman he'd ever seen.

"Amaya, I love you. And I meant what I said before. It'll be next to impossible, but we're going to make it. I promise."

Having calmed down significantly, Amaya's expression passed from a hysterical fear and sadness to a much calmer, gentler pain. Eyes screwed tight, she once again buried her face in Yoshirou's crumpled dress shirt.

"I love you, too." She muttered, squeezing him as tightly as she possibly could.

"How about this: Since I'm here now, I'll keep an eye on Kei while you get a little sleep. Then we can both drive home and get a real night's rest, and we'll be here bright and early for them to bring Kei out of sedation in the morning. Can we do that?" Amaya hesitated for several long seconds as she contemplated her answer. What she gave was the hardest admission she'd ever had to make.

"... Yeah. Okay. But we have to be here early."

"Absolutely. Anytime you think necessary."

With that, the exhausted couple made their way back to the visitor's chairs. Yoshirou set them across from each other, with the seats facing each other. He sat down first, stretching his long legs across them. He then let Amaya crawl on top of him, letting her curl up on his legs under his suit jacket, resting her head lightly on his stomach. As Yoshirou looked down at his amazing wife, the woman who gave birth to his two beautiful children, he felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. What had he done in his life to deserve the strength of her love? As he watched her drift off into much needed sleep, Yoshirou Tsukishima figured that, despite his recent tragedies, he was incredibly lucky to possess the affection of a woman so strong.


	24. Chapter 24

It seemed like no time at all before Amaya found herself walking back through the front doors of Miyagi General Hospital. She hardly remembered the drive home the night before, though Yoshirou followed closely behind her and assured her she didn't hit anything. After shuffling through the door and kicking her shoes off at the entrance, the last thing Amaya remembered before waking up this morning was her head hitting the pillow before she even had time to change. She woke up what felt like minutes later to a gentle nudge, courtesy of her pajama-clad husband laying beside her, and a quiet reminder that it was time to go to the hospital to see Kei.

The sun had just begun to rise over the horizon when Amaya and Yoshirou returned to the front desk in the hospital's front waiting room. They notified the receptionist of where they were going and after she gave them the go ahead, the couple quickly made their way to Kei's hospital room. As they traversed the white, sterile halls to the ICU, Amaya couldn't help but wonder what would happen once they reached their son. Her fear from the night before grew steadily in her chest as she couldn't help but to think of all the ways things could go wrong. What if he woke up and he was still in pain? What if he woke up and couldn't remember who he was or what had happened, or worse - didn't wake up at all? Amaya couldn't bear the thought of spending the last twenty-four hours trying to live with Akiteru's death, only to lose Kei just when she thought she might make it through this tragedy in one piece. Once the notion occurred to her, it was all she could think about until Yoshirou placed a firm arm around her waist and pulled her close as they walked.

"Relax, Amaya. The hospital staff has kept a close eye on Kei all night. If something had gone wrong, they would have called us. Everything is going to be fine." Amaya tried to keep her husband's comforting logic in mind as she continued to walk until the furnished wood door of her son's room appeared in sight.

When she and her husband opened the door to Kei's room, the first sight they saw was their unconscious son with a young nurse and a stern-looking doctor at his bedside. They seemed to be deep in discussion, pausing every so often to side-eye Kei. They stopped talking suddenly at the sound of Mr. and Mrs. Tsukishima's entrance, and the doctor crossed the room to greet them.

"Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Tsukishima. My name is Dr. Fujimori, and I'm your son's attending physician." He reached out and shook each of their hands as they closed the door behind them. As the nurse watched Kei, Dr. Fujimori sat down with Amaya and Yoshirou and explained what was about to happen.

"You're just in time," he said as Amaya and Yoshirou seated themselves, quickly following suit himself, "We're about to take him off the sedative." Amaya fidgeted in her seat. The closer they got to actually waking him up, the harder it was for her to keep her fears from the surface.

"Is he okay?" she babbled, "Nothing happened, right? There weren't any complications?" Dr. Fujimori, having dealt with plenty of concerned mothers before, was quick to reassure her.

"Absolutely - he's fine. We kept a close eye on him all night, and his recovery is right on schedule. Now," he paused, "The sedative we're using on Kei is an anesthetic called Propofol. Propofol is standard use in hospitals, and as far as sedatives go, it's fairly mild. Patients who are taken off Propofol usually wake up within minutes of the drug's removal. However, we also have him on morphine to help manage his pain. Morphine is, of course, heavier and that could elongate the process a little."

"I'm sorry, if I may," Yoshirou began, turning to his wife and interrupting the doctor, "You didn't tell me they put him on morphine." Turning back to the doctor, he continued. "Isn't that dangerous? He's a kid. Can't you use something less risky?" Dr. Fujimori sighed, a look of general pity and discomfort spread across his face.

"Well, actually, I was getting to that. The morphine dosage we have your son on right now is extremely low. The reasoning is twofold. Not only is morphine addictive, but it also puts a high amount of stress on the patient's organs. The problem your son has right now is the fact that the organ that filters medications and other impurities from his blood, his liver, has been severely damaged by the bullet the surgeon removed yesterday. This means that we can't give him too many heavy pain medications, because his liver isn't healthy enough to handle them."

Amaya's worried expression deepened. What did this mean for her son's recovery? If he couldn't have pain medication, did that mean he'd have to endure his recovery process without meds? How could he possibly sleep at night, or do anything for that matter, if he's constantly in pain? The more she thought about the massive amount of pain that Kei would endure, the more her anger skyrocketed. She was not about to stand by and watch her son suffer.

"If he can't have pain medication, how will he recover?" She stood from her chair in the height of her anger. "That's inhumane!" Dr. Fujimori stood with her, placing a soft hand on her arm and guiding her back to her seat as he spoke.

"It's not that he can't have pain medication at all, it's that he can't have anything too strong in high amounts. We're giving him the most we can, but unfortunately we can't give him the dose we would normally give trauma surgery patients, or the damage to his liver could be fatal." He moved his hand from Mrs. Tsukishima's arm to her knee, patting it gently.

"I'm very sorry. It's the best we can do. He'll be spared the pain for today for the most part, as it'll take him most of the day to become fully aware after being sedated, but as he begins to regain his mental faculties over the next couple days, he'll be more aware of his body and his pain will be more intense. He may have a few moments of clarity over the course of today in which his pain could spike, but for the most part, his awareness will be in and out."

Amaya and Yoshirou let the resulting silence deepen as Dr. Fujimori stopped talking. After letting their current situation settle in their minds, Yohsirou had a thought.

"I'm sorry, you might not have an answer to this right now," he began, trying to be as respectful as possible and keeping his voice at a low deadpan, "But... we recently lost Kei's older brother to a drug overdose... Is there any way he could be released temporarily to go to the funeral on Monday?"

It would have been impossible for the Tsukishimas to fathom how badly Dr. Fujimori wanted to tell them yes. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to assure them that, 'Yes, your son will absolutely be healthy enough to go to the funeral,' that amid all the tragedy this family had suffered already, that he could at least give them that small comfort. Unfortunately, that answer was still up in the air. There was no guarantee that Kei would continue to recover at the rate he currently was, especially since they didn't know how his body would react to his condition in a state of consciousness. All in all, Dr. Fujimori had to give them the best outlook he could: a maybe.

"Unfortunately," he began, "That depends entirely on the course of the next day or two. He'll have to be awake and aware enough to handle being outside of the hospital, for starters, and he'll have to be off the chest tube. Any sort of infection or complication from the surgery would make it impossible, as well. If he is healthy enough to leave, even if only for a few hours, he'll need to remain on oxygen and all his IVs, and he'll be confined to a wheelchair for the entirety of the outing - walking would put too much stress on his body and he could tear his stitches. He'd need someone with him at all times, and he wouldn't be able to do most things on his own. That's the best case scenario. If any one of these conditions isn't met, it would make leaving the hospital far too dangerous for him."

Amaya and Yoshirou looked down out of worry, clearly hoping for a more positive answer. Dr. Fujimori figured he'd better cheer them up quickly - they obviously needed it.

"It isn't impossible," he continued, "Right now, as I said before, your son's recovery is right on schedule. There's a very good chance that things will proceed as they are, and if that happens, he'll be able to go to the funeral." The Tsukishimas went silent for a long time. After several seconds of resulting discomfort, Yoshirou, with his arm slung protectively around his wife's shoulders, finally spoke in a quiet voice.

"Doctor, we don't know how to thank you for everything you've done for Kei." The doctor smiled. The thank-yous were always the best part of the job.

"Absolutely my pleasure. Now, if you don't have any other questions, let's get started."

Dr. Fujimori stood from his chair and led the Tsukishimas back to Kei's bedside. As Amaya and Yoshirou stood off to one side of the bed, Dr. Fujimori joined the nurse on the other side with Kei's IVs. The nurse looked questioningly to the doctor, and he gave her a nod of confirmation in return. She then turned her attention back to Kei's IV pole and removed the bag labeled 'Propofol' and all its connected tubing, careful to do so safely, and without disturbing his other IV lines. Once she was done, with Kei's arm clean and the proper equipment disposed of, she confirmed it with Dr. Fujimori. Amaya and Yoshirou looked toward them expectantly, awaiting any sort of information on their son's condition, or when he might wake up.

Every few seconds, Amaya looked down at her younger son, hoping beyond hope for any sign that he was about to open his eyes. She watched his chest rise and fall slowly but surely as he took steady breath after steady breath. She glanced repeatedly at his heart monitor - at the continuous proof that his heart was still beating. She clung desperately to the evidence that her son was still with her. However, it was torture - every passing moment that Kei remained still was another moment of fear that her precious little boy had slipped away, that he would never wake up, and she would never see the beautiful honey gold of his eyes again.

"He's not waking up..." she mumbled without breaking eye contact with her son.

"Give him a couple minutes. Let the drug filter through his system," the nurse responded. She took a moment to study the pure anguish on Amaya's face. It was clear to her that not having any influence over her son's condition was all but killing her.

"You know," she began with a small smile in an attempt to comfort Amaya, "If you spoke to him or held his hand, it might help him wake up a little faster."

Amaya nodded meekly and reached out, taking her son's hand into her own. With her other hand, she reached up and brushed her fingers along his hairline, feeling his greasy blond hair caress her fingertips.

"Kei, baby," she called, her voice cracking with the threat of oncoming tears, "You've gotta wake up now, okay? I know you're brain's a little fuzzy, but it's time for you to get up now." She waited, hoping beyond hope that her words would shake Kei back to consciousness. As the seconds passed and neither Amaya nor Yoshirou saw so much as a twitch, Amaya felt the hope in her heart crash to the floor. As the despair set into her very bones, she subconsciously began to shake. Yoshirou, noticing his wife's pain, pulled her closer and gave her a gentle kiss on the crown of her head.

"It'll be okay, Amaya," he whispered, "Give him some time - He'll come around. We haven't lost him."

It was in that moment the distraught couple witnessed what they could only describe as a miracle. Just as the words left Yoshirou's mouth, his injured son began to stir. As Yoshirou comforted his wife, he glanced over to his son's bed just in time to see the boy's hand twitch, ever so slightly. Wonder and amazement spread over his face as Amaya gasped loudly in exultation beside him. It was difficult to hide, mostly because he was afraid of worrying Amaya any more than she already was, but Yoshirou was just as terrified that Kei would never wake. The pure, gut-wrenching shock that came with Akiteru's loss was soul-numbing. The moment Amaya had delivered the news during their phone conversation over a day ago, Yoshirou had felt like his world had come apart, unraveling at the seams and disintegrating in front of his eyes. The temptation to fall into the same pit of despair, that death would swallow Kei just the same, was a force almost too powerful to withstand. The relief that came with Kei's stirring, even if it was nothing more than a simple twitch of the hand, was unimaginable.

A half second later Kei's eyelids twitched, tightening ever so slightly and then loosening again - the whole movement passing in less than a second. He rolled his head very slightly to the side, angling his face vaguely toward his parents.

And then it happened. Very slowly, Kei opened his eyes.

When Amaya saw the vibrant color of her son's irises, every cell in her body leaped for joy. It was more than exuberance; it was ecstasy. The sheer amount of relief that flooded her body was unparalleled. As she stared, unable to pull her gaze away from her son's face, the words kept playing in her head like a mantra: _He's alive... Thank god, he's alive..._

Then suddenly, breaking Amaya's train of thought, Kei met her eyes... and spoke. His voice was small, weakened by injury and confusion, but it was his. It was the voice of her little baby.

"... M-mom?"

The dam burst. Tears flooded Amaya's eyes, cascading down her face in a waterfall of glee. He recognized her. Not only was he awake, but he was still here, mentally intact. She couldn't believe it. Kei had pulled through. He was going to be okay.

"Yes," she eagerly, lovingly responded, "Yes, baby, it's me."

Kei blinked hard for a few seconds, shifting his gaze to Yoshirou. As if speaking through thick gravy, he opened his mouth again.

"...Dad?"

Hearing his son's voice again after such an ordeal brought tears to Yoshirou's eyes faster than he'd ever thought possible. Kei was alive. Giving his emotion free reign over his expressions for the first time in several years, Yoshirou smiled. He always knew his son was a fighter.

"Yes, Kei."

"Kei?" He turned to face the doctor.

"My name is Dr. Fujimori, and I need to ask you a few questions to make sure your brain's intact, okay?" Tsukishima nodded.

"First thing's first. Can you tell me your name?"

"Kei Tsukishima."

"How old are you, Kei?"

"... Sixteen."

"What day is it today?" Tsukishima paused much longer this time, suddenly realizing that he didn't actually know what day it was. The late night volleyball practice was which night again? Thursday? That meant today was probably Friday, so...

"... Friday, March 20."

"Actually," the doctor corrected, "Today is Saturday the 21st. You've been in a medically induced coma for the last twenty-four hours, but that's alright. It looks like everything's working fine up top." He chuckled lightly at his own sense of humor. "Nurse Anzu and I need to go take are of our other patients, but if you need anything or have any questions, you can ask the nurse's station. Or," He gestured to the side of Kei's bed. "There's a help button here you can use that will call a nurse for you." Amaya and Yoshirou smiled and thanked the two as they exited the room.

Unable to contain her relief anymore, Amaya reached over, cupping Kei's face in her hands and kissing him repeatedly. She brushed her fingers through his hair, all the while whispering soothingly.

"Oh, Kei... Oh, my little boy... I'm so glad you're alright..." Hearing a soft grunt, followed by a small shuffling underneath the hospital blankets, Amaya paused to hear her son speak again.

"Mom... please..."

"Amaya," Yoshirou interjected in a stern voice, "Ease up a little. He just had surgery, don't smother him." Coming back to her senses, Amaya relaxed.

"Um... What..." Kei paused and glanced suddenly around the room, struggling through the fog in his brain, "Where...?" Amaya tell by the look in her son's gaze, his focus was shifting in and out. One moment his mind seemed to be as clear as it had ever been, the next he seemed to be staring past her into a void of the unknown. She knew the reason why was nothing more than the combination of drug soup and blood loss Kei had experienced over the last two days, but she couldn't help but worry anyway.

"You're in the hospital, honey," she said, "You were shot. Do you remember what happened?" She watched Kei's brow furrow as he pushed past the cloud hanging over his thoughts, trying to remember the night of the incident.

"I..."

He paused.

"... the store. A man... tried to rob... Sugawara panicked... " He paused again. He blinked several times. He started again.

"My chest... stomach... on fire... fading... I don't...remember..."

"Well, that's to be expected," Yoshirou chimed in, thinking back to Amaya's explanation of the situation as they left the hospital last night. As they'd traversed the long walk back outside to their cars, he had asked her about the details of Kei's injury, and she'd given him the short version of the story Sugawara had told her the night before. The level of terror the poor kid had experienced shocked him, and even if the story's victim hadn't been his own son, he still didn't think he'd forget it any time soon. "By the time the ambulance arrived, you'd lost a lot of blood. Your brain was too absorbed in keeping you alive to form any sort of memory of the incident."

"I was with Sugawara..." Kei reiterated, his focus seemingly waning back into the beginning of his thought, "Not Yamaguchi... his dad... Where's Yamaguchi? I need... I need to talk to him..." As Kei's thoughts continuously returned to his best friend, Amaya could see her son becoming more and more agitated. Wanting nothing more than to keep him as comfortable as possible, she placed her hand on his arm and spoke to him as softly as she could.

"He's okay, baby. Yamaguchi's fine. Why don't you get some rest and I'll wake you in a little while?" Already beginning to nod off, Kei yawned and closed his eyes.

"Mmhmm..." he mumbled, "G'night, mom... love... you..."

As Amaya teared up, Yoshirou pulled her into a hug. She couldn't remember the last time Kei had told her he loved her. After his fight with Akiteru, he'd become so emotionally closed off that he never really talked to her at all. She knew it was natural for teenagers to go through a phase where they didn't seem to care about anyone, but his fight with Akiteru was so final, so devastating for him, that she was sure the emotional damage would be permanent. To see that now, amidst everything that had happened - that underneath all the garbage he was still the same loving little boy she'd raised - was a heart-warming relief.

"Yoshirou..." she cried, her face buried in her husband's chest, "He loves me."

"Of course he loves you," the businessman reasoned, "You're his mother."

As the two stayed like that for several more minutes, Amaya thought about everything she had endured over the course of the last two days. After Officer Hashimoto broke the comfort and silence of her home with the news of the shooting, after she felt every bit of hope left in her soul drain onto the floor of the morgue at the sight of Akiteru's lifeless body, the idea that moments like these, full of love and tenderness, were still possible was baffling to her. Even after all the pain and suffering, she still had a husband on whom she could depend in her darkest hour and a son who still loved her despite the turmoil of the last few years. Now that Kei was alive, awake, and talking, she knew that with her loving family beside her, she really could carry on.


	25. Chapter 25

As the day wore on, Amaya and Yoshirou watched vigilantly as Kei slipped in and out of consciousness. To the couple's good fortune, every time he awoke he seemed to stay awake longer, and was increasingly aware with each bout of energy. Amaya and Yoshirou kept him alert by holding small conversations during his periods of awareness, to sharpen his mind and give him the motivation to keep fighting. They talked about school, music, volleyball - anything they could think of to hold their son's attention as he inched away from death's still-open door. Around 11am, after a few hours of alternating sleep and conversation, a nurse entered the room with a food cart and a smile.

"Lunch time!" she exclaimed as she pushed open the door, pulling the food cart inside behind her. She took a tray from the top tier and set it on Tsukishima's bedside table. The young man had been sleeping lightly for the last thirty minutes, and the clack of the tray hitting the table inches from his head was just enough to pull him out of his doze. His eyes fluttered open sleepily as he angled his head toward the noise, looking for its source. Amaya, who had been standing at the window on the far wall chirping absentmindedly at the sparrows dancing on the sill, noticed the commotion and returned to her son's bedside as Yoshirou kept a careful eye on  
them from a few feet away.

"Hey, baby, how are you feeling?" she asked as she ran her hand underneath the bed's railing. Finding the button she was looking for, she pressed and held it, lifting Kei's bed into a somewhat comfortable sitting position. Kei answered his mother's question with a soft groan.

Stepping around Amaya, who had seated herself in a visitor's chair at Tsukishima's bedside, the nurse made her way back around to the foot of the bed and checked the injured player's charts.

"I see..." she murmured as her eyes darted across the page, "Kei, you're doing very well. At this rate, you'll be back on your feet in no time!" She gave the family a cheery wave and pushed her cart out of the room. After the door closed, Kei let loose a tired sneer.

"Why is she so cheery? I'm laid up in a hospital bed," he grumbled, his voice still noticeably weak, "I can't be that healthy."

"What's the matter, Kei?" Amaya sighed, reacting to Kei's obvious discomfort as she massaged circles into the back of her son's hand, "You aren't in pain, are you?"

"A little," the blocker replied, "It's more of a low throbbing than real pain, though. My dislocated finger from the Shiratorizawa game hurt worse."  
"That's because you're on morphine, and you're still out of sorts," Yoshirou interjected, joining his wife at Kei's bedside, "Trust me. If it weren't for the drugs, it'd be a lot worse." Kei broke eye contact with his father, looking down and away without offering a comment in return.

"Don't give me the attitude, young man," Yoshirou replied, raising his voice slightly above his usual calm, stern tone, "You look at me when I'm talking to you." Kei stayed still, unmoving and unwilling to obey his father's orders. "I don't think you understand what your mother and I went through these last few days."

"He didn't mean anything, Yoshirou," Amaya begged, tugging on her husband's arm, "He's tired. Don't do this now."

"Let me finish." Yoshirou turned his attention back to his son. "Kei, your mother was awake for these last two days wondering if you were going to live or die. I boarded an emergency flight on the other side of the world to get back here praying that you'd hang on in the meantime. Do you understand? We spent hours in this hospital afraid that we were going to lose you. The least you could do is show us some respect!"

"Yoshirou, stop!" Amaya shouted, standing and putting herself between her husband and Kei,  
"Your son just went through the most traumatizing experience of his life. He's tired, and he's in pain. Don't you think you're overreacting a little?"

"He needs to respect what you went through - what we went through."

"But why?" Amaya asked, gentle, earnest concern dripping from her voice. She softly caressed Yoshirou's chest and arms in an attempt to calm him down. "Why does he need to respect that right now? Why can't he recover first and deal with everything else later?"

"...Stop. Please."

Watching his parents fight was unbearable. Kei knew that they were both usually relatively calm people: his mother was easy-going and steady; his father was reserved and strict. Shouting from either one of them always meant that some sort of trouble was brewing. To see them going at each other's throats definitely meant that something was not okay. It scared him more than he'd expected it to. Before he could follow the thought, however, another occurred to him.

"...Mom?" His parents turned to face him.

"Yes, honey?"

It was something that had been tickling the back of Kei's mind, something his subconscious had noticed, but refused to share with the rest of his brain until he'd dragged it out forcefully...

_Where was his brother?_

After Akiteru had lied to him so thoroughly, he'd tried to sever all emotional ties to the older brother who shattered his trust. He'd never admit it aloud, or even to himself, but there were times every once in a while when he missed all the childhood memories he and Akiteru had shared together. Despite that, he'd always shut them out. Burying emotions was always better than facing them; there was less of a mess to clean up afterward. Even so, Akiteru never gave up on him - it was something he had only just recently begun to realize.

So then why wasn't he here? He didn't have classes again for another week, so it was unlikely that he went back to the college. He could be at work, but he had a hazy memory of his doctor telling him it was Saturday, and Akiteru didn't usually work this early on weekends. Maybe he picked up an extra shift, or something else came up...

"Where's Akiteru?" His parents stared at him; not a sound passed their lips.

"I barely escaped death." he tried again with a twinge of sarcasm, "He doesn't usually skip out on big family moments."

Amaya's breath hitched in her throat, her heart jumping into her mouth. She knew Kei would ask about Akiteru eventually, though she had hoped to put it off as long as possible. Earlier that morning when Kei was asleep, Yoshirou had taken Amaya out into the hallway and asked her the inevitable: What would they do when Kei finally asked where his brother was? The funeral was in a couple days, so he'd need to learn the truth by then, but it wouldn't take the teen long to realize that the older brother who loved him more than life itself hadn't shown up to the hospital to visit him. At the time, Amaya didn't have an answer. She told him they didn't have a choice but to tell him the truth, but even as difficult as things had been up to that point, she still could never could have imagined that actually being in the situation would be this heart-wrenchingly difficult.

Amaya kept her face as still as possible as she and Yoshirou pulled their chairs back to Kei's bedside, easing back down into them. They did their best to keep all traces of emotion from their faces, but the effort was futile. Kei could read them like open books; he always could. Not only did the truth leak from their expressions, but from their mannerisms as well. When his father took his hand, his fingers were rigid and awkward. When his mother tried to speak, her voice was hardly recognizable, sounding like more of a soft croak than a smooth song.

"Honey... There's something very important your father and I need to discuss with you." Kei raised a tentative eyebrow. His parents were usually so good at keeping their emotions in check. But not only were they arguing with each other more than he'd ever seen, but they were visibly upset at the mention of his older brother? Kei was uneasy.

"We thought a long time about how we would break this to you, Kei," Yoshirou said, his voice quiet and stiff, "You need to understand that what we're about to say is a conversation we'd never thought we'd have to have."

"... What are you talking about?" Kei asked, fear bleeding into his voice. The raw emotion evident in his father's tone shot his unease into the sky. "Did something... happen?"

It was at that point Amaya started to cry. Tears streamed down her face as she met her son's frightened gaze. She didn't want to tell her precious little boy the news of his brother's death - she didn't want to be the one to do the damage. It was soul-crushing; she wanted to run away. Taking a deep breath, Amaya steadied herself. It was a task that needed to be done.

"K-Kei," Amaya began, her breath catching in the back of her throat, "I... I don't know how to tell you this, baby."

"Tell me what, mom?" He asked, eyes wide with fear.

"Akiteru..." Grief choked off her voice, and she fell apart into more sobs. It felt like there was an enormous weight in the center of her chest, crushing everything inside of her. "Akiteru passed away the night you went into surgery."

_Slice._

If the day Kei discovered Akiteru's lie was the first severance, then the day he discovered his death was the second. All it took was a swing of the sword to shatter him again.

_Slice._

Except it didn't stop at his head. He felt like different parts of his body were being lobbed off, one after another, each more shocking and horrifying than the last.

_Slice._

It persisted until there was nothing left, until Kei was nothing more than a blood-drenched pile of mangled body parts on the floor. How could this happen? Akiteru... his big brother, the one who looked out for him, who would defend him to his last breath, give up the very core of his being to make him happy… dead?

Amaya watched as Kei's face blanched, the color of his skin draining into a delicate pallor. She instinctively took his arm out of concern and felt his whole body tremble with the magnitude of his shock. As the emotion began to trickle across Kei's face, Amaya could identify its nature - in the touch of light in her son's golden eyes, in the way his eyebrows arched and knitted together - her little boy felt betrayed. When Kei spoke again, Amaya could feel the hurt drip from his words, his tone saturated with anguish.

"... How did it happen?"

"It was an accidental drug overdose." Yoshirou answered. He breathed deeply, keeping himself calm and keeping his emotion under control. "Your mother was here with your coach, Akiteru, and your friend Sugawara, waiting for you to be out of surgery." He began to stroke circles into the back of Kei's hand, though more out of absent minded fidgeting than for his son's comfort.

"Your coach and Sugawara left to have a meeting with your team, to tell them about your injury, and your mother went home to grab your insurance information so she could fill out the forms, leaving Akiteru here alone. During the time she was gone, he... he slipped into a coma and stopped breathing. By the time she got back a half an hour later... his heart had stopped."

"A doctor came in and performed CPR until they could get him to the equipment that could help him, but even then it was too late," Amaya continued, still crying, "Later, they told me that Akiteru had been taking sleeping pills - probably to treat anxiety. He'd mistimed his doses and overdosed, and nobody helped him because it just looked like he'd fallen asleep."

Kei absorbed the information silently, forcing back the anger that was just beginning to overtake the betrayal in his mind, adding its fuel to the already burning flame. How dare he? How dare Akiteru lie to him, work so hard to build his trust back, only to take his own life in another selfish lie?

"Did you know that he was taking sleeping pills?" he asked.

"No..." Amaya replied, her answer ringing with resignation, "No, he never told us."

Just as he suspected. Once a liar, always a liar.

"Of course..."

"Kei!" Yoshirou bellowed.

"Kei..." Amaya whimpered, breathless and in a state of shock, "How... how could you? He's your brother..." Kei didn't answer right away, turning away from his parents' gaze. He tried to shut his anger down, but it refused, burning, blistering the inside of his chest. He hadn't fully reconciled with the first time Akiteru had lied to him. His brother's death not only piled on profound emotional damage, but dug up the old scars, too. How did Akiteru expect him to deal with this, especially now, while he was drugged up and in pain? Ultimately, he decided to simply keep a lid on it. Loud anger was dangerous - the only safe anger was a quiet one.

Several seconds passed in silence.

"... Fine." Yoshirou lowered his gaze, refusing to even look at the son who had disrespected him so completely. His voice carried the calm frigidity of an ice box. "If that's the way you want it, then go ahead. Trample all over your brother's memory. It's not like you didn't give up on him before."

And with that, Yoshirou left the room, the swift slam of the door ringing of finality.

* * *

"Honey, you need to eat."

Kei ignored his mother, refusing to even touch the food that waited on the bed table for the last forty-five minutes. It had been twenty minutes since Yoshirou had stormed out, and Amaya had spent that time chasing him down the hallway. She begged him to come back inside, to be there for their son during the darkest time of his life, but Yoshirou wasn't hearing it. He refused, his anger eating him up like she'd never seen. He retaliated by expressing his shock and disbelief at his son's complete disregard for his brother's life. Yoshirou couldn't believe Kei was capable of being so cold. Amaya tried to diffuse his anger by reminding him that Kei was stressed and traumatized by the events he'd just been through, but Yoshirou wasn't willing to hear it. I guess, she realized, he just needs his own space right now. She tried not to think about how similar her husband was to the son he was scorning.

"I'm not hungry."

Amaya sighed as she watched Kei pick at the IV lines taped to his wrist.

"Kei, don't do that," she said as she pulled his hand from the IVs, "You need the nutrients to heal, baby."

"... I'm not hungry." Amaya reached out and lifted his chin with her hand so that he would meet her eyes.

"Your father... he's under a lot of stress right now - " Kei turned away, breaking from his mother's touch. He let his tired eyes rest on the off-white color of the opposite wall. As he stared, he found himself wishing he could simply fade into non-existence, all his problems vanishing like a wisp of smoke on a strong wind.

"I don't want to hear about my father."

"You need to talk, Kei. Is this about what happened when your brother was in high school?" Amaya watched him freeze up all over again, shock rippling through his body like a bolt of lightning. He turned back toward her, the pain of a ruined childhood blazing in his eyes.

"I don't want to hear about my brother, either." Amaya sighed. She had her suspicions but hoped she wouldn't be right. She knew Akiteru's lie all those years ago had wounded Kei very deeply, and it was because of that wound he had a hard time moving on. The day Kei lost faith in his brother, he'd lost faith in everything else, too - and he'd never gotten over it. Amaya knew the only way to keep her son from self destructing now was for him to finally work through all the emotions he'd buried all those years ago.

"You know I love you very dearly, right, Kei?"

He turned away again.

Amaya pressed on at her son's silence. She reached up and brushed the hair from his face.

"And you know you can trust me with absolutely anything?" Kei continued to stare at the wall,  
his face unreadable. Amaya knew she'd never get anything out of him by force. She parented him the only way she knew how, by giving him his space, and always making sure she was in his corner - no matter what. Throughout their conversation, Amaya had seen the weariness growing in her son's eyes. He was wearing out; the light behind his gaze was dimming fast. Right now, what Kei needed to do was focus on getting better.

"Kei, how about you take some time to eat now - you don't have to finish everything, just eat as much as you can - and then you can get some sleep. I'll talk to your father again, and we can sort this out later, when you have a bit more energy. Is that okay?"

Electing not to fight anymore, Kei nodded slowly as Amaya pushed the bed table around in front of him. Kei took his utensils from the tray and began to pick at his food as Amaya sat down beside the bed and monitored him in case he needed her help. After a few minutes his eyelids began to droop as his movements became slower, and Amaya noticed he was reaching his limits. She gently placed her hands on his and guided his arm back down onto the table, coaxing him to put down the utensils. As Kei stared blankly at his half-eaten tray, Amaya watched her normally staunchly independent son fall backwards into exhaustion. Watching him like this - it was torture.

"That's okay, that's enough for now, honey. Get some sleep." She pressed the recline button on the bed, slowly bringing it back to its standard position. That done, as Kei began to drift off, Amaya leaned over him and kissed him delicately on the forehead. It both humbled and terrified her, feeling like everyone else in her life was spinning out of control, but it was these small moments of affection - the fact that her son needed her - that held her together.

* * *

Daichi couldn't stop thinking about how badly the last visit to Tsukishima had gone. He sat on his living room couch, flipping through channels and eating a lunch he'd hastily made out of last night's dinner leftovers. He was so distracted by his concern for Tsukishima and for his team that he had stopped paying attention to the television long ago. He'd tried texting Suga privately about the whole thing, but his vice-captain had neglected to respond, irritating him more than it probably should have. Daichi really was worried about the silver-haired setter - so much so that he'd even considered asking his mom about what he could do to help, thinking her experience in psychology would be useful, but ultimately he decided against it. He was worried about violating Sugawara's privacy. It was a little soon after the incident, after all. It was then Daichi made a promise to himself: If Sugawara didn't come around in another two days, he would talk to his mom.

By the time he'd finished his lunch, the television had been blaring some obscure game show for the last half hour. Turning off the TV, he swiped open his phone, brought up the volleyball team group chat, and scrolled through the messages. He'd organized another visit to the hospital this afternoon, since there was no school and Tsukishima was supposed to be awake. Most of the team confirmed their attendance almost immediately; the only player neglecting to do so was Sugawara. As Daichi sauntered into the kitchen to put his dishes in the sink, he found himself wondering if Sugawara would show up. He couldn't imagine he wouldn't, since he was probably still guilty about the whole mess, but as it came time for him to leave to meet with the team outside the gym, he couldn't help but to wonder.

Daichi tried not to think about anything else in particular until he and the team stood behind the door to Tsukishima's hospital room. As it turned out, Sugawara did show up, and so did Coach Ukai - he and Takeda-sensei even drove them from the school. When they came upon the closed door, Ukai took the lead and knocked as respectfully as he could. Amaya tentatively opened it, her face lighting up upon seeing her son's volleyball team.

"Come in," she said, opening the door as wide as it could go and stepping aside to let them in from the hallway, "Kei just woke up a little bit ago. I'm sure he'd be glad to see you."

The team filed through the open door, thanking Mrs. Tsukishima as they passed and surrounding their injured friend.

"What...?" said friend asked as he looked around the room at his team, the heavy cloud of slumber still hanging stubbornly over him like a thunderstorm, "What are you doing here?"

"You're our friend, Tsukishima," Daichi answered, the rest of the team - Ukai and Takeda included - nodding along beside him, "You were hurt, and we were worried about you. Of course we came to see you."

"Yeah, we did!" Nishinoya exclaimed, giving the smirky blocker an enthusiastic double thumbs up, "Glad to see you're still among the living!"

Tsukishima looked around at his teammates surrounding his bed, trying not to be embarrassed by the pitiful state in which they'd found him. It didn't seem to bother them any, he'd noticed. Nishinoya and Tanaka were absolutely brimming, as was Hinata. Daichi was stern, yet proud (though, honestly, how different was that from the captain's normal expression?). Ennoshita, Kinnoshita, and Narita were smiling very simply, obviously happy, but there was something about the curves of their smiles that told Tsukishima their minds were more focused toward the team's future. Kageyama seemed more frustrated than happy, but even he looked relieved that Tsukishima had pulled through.

He turned his attention to Yamaguchi, who looked like he was about to start crying out of joy. His lip quivered and Tsukishima could see the light from the open window reflect off the moisture gathering in his best friend's eyes.

"Tsukki!" he shouted practically tripping over himself as he fumbled his way through the group to his best friend's bedside. He let his tears flowed freely as he clutched the railing so hard he thought it might break, cracking into pieces in the palms of his hands. "Tsukki, y-you're okay! I was s-so s-scared! I can't believe you're… you're okay!"

"Hey," Tsukishima said, seemingly oblivious to the magnitude of the relief that Yamaguchi had just expressed, "How's your dad?"

Yamaguchi stopped, doing a mental double take. As if he needed confirmation that his best friend cared about him - the first thing Tsukki was concerned about was Yamaguchi's family.

"He's fine," the pinch server responded, smiling from ear to ear, "The stroke didn't do much damage. He spent the night at the hospital for monitoring, but there weren't any problems."  
Tsukishima nodded as if this answer satisfied him. When he turned his attention away from Yamaguchi and back to the rest of his team, he saw Sugawara suddenly appear in his field of vision. The setter looked tired, clearly weighed down by the events of the last few days. He was also a bit twitchy, his hands fidgeting as he delicately avoided looking Tsukishima in the eye. He doubted the third year had been sleeping.

"Sugawara."

"Um…" he began, unsure of what to say. Everything had sounded so much better in his head as he recited it on the ride to the hospital. He reached up and scratched the back of his neck. As if possessed, Sugawara suddenly bowed deeply.

"I'm so sorry!" he cried, "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have to be here! You wouldn't have gotten hurt! It's all my - "

"Thank-you."

Sugawara shot up from his bowed position, stunned. Thank-you? It was his stupid idea to go to the convenience store that put Tsukishima in the hospital, that almost killed him! What could his teammate possibly have to thank him for?

"How - Why are you thanking me?"

"If you and Kiku hadn't reacted as quickly as you did, I would have died. I'm thanking you because you thought quickly." Sugawara hung his head out of embarrassment. Tsukishima's memory had to be addled by pain pills and blood loss. There was no way he could take credit for any of Kiku's initiative. Sugawara was certain he didn't do anything but hold them both back.

"Tsukishima… you're wrong. The action was all Kiku's. I didn't do anything but weigh her down."

"Sugawara."

The aforementioned setter lifted his head at the sound of his name.

"You helped to keep me from bleeding out. I was there, remember? Kiku couldn't have done the things she did without help."

"But I was completely useless! All I did was shut down. She's the one who came up with everything. I just sat there and trembled."

"You kept my bleeding under control while she readied the bandages. You handed her supplies whenever she needed them. To see someone as traumatically injured as I was and help takes tremendous courage. My parents could have lost both sons that night. Thanks to you, they didn't."

Sugawara contemplated this notion for several minutes. He thought back to the night his teammate was in surgery, not wanting to imagine what Mrs. Tsukishima would have done if her only remaining child had died. Even if Sugawara knew he couldn't forgive himself, he knew that Mrs. Tsukishima would forgive him for anything, and he realized… maybe that was somewhere to start.

"And what about you, King?" Tsukishima asked as he turned his attention to Kageyama, a sarcastic tilt to his voice, "You look a little down. Were you hoping I'd kick the bucket so you wouldn't have to deal with me anymore?"

Kageyama scoffed, not meeting Tsukishima's gaze. Tsukishima's eyebrows flew up in surprise. _He won't look me in the eye… Don't tell me Kageyama was actually worried about me_. In any other situation, Tsukishima realized, Kageyama would have confronted him immediately. The fact that he didn't obviously meant that something Tsukishima said had hit home. He actually _was_ worried.

"You're such a bastard, you know that?" Kageyama said, "We need you on the team for Nationals. We can't win without your read blocking, and you know it. That's what I was worried about."

Tsukishima let a scowl pass over his face.

"Who told you I wasn't playing at Nationals? Did the doctors tell you that? My parents?" The team stared at him in surprise. Once Kageyama brought it up at the team meeting, they'd all assumed it was a given. Gunshot wounds took several months to heal completely, especially with the additional injuries Tsukishima had received to his internal organs. He'd never be fully healed by the time they played at Nationals.

"We still have a couple months. I'll be on the court. Don't you dare count me out."

Ukai had never seen his first year blocker don such a determined expression. The coach hadn't really thought about it much, but Tsukishima's attitude and overall demeanor toward volleyball had undergone some big changes during the time since the Shiratorizawa game. Sure, on the surface he was still the same smirky, sarcastic kid who hated it when his peers got out of hand, but on the court he was different - he was evolving. His brow furrowed a little more when he was entranced by the ball. His eyes shone a little brighter. His step, a little quicker. It had taken Ukai more than a week to notice such slight changes, but those small changes quickly added up to big ones.

So when Ukai heard Tsukishima confidently proclaim that he would definitely be playing at Nationals two months from now, he wasn't exactly surprised, but he was, in a way, dismayed. If only the teen knew how improbable that was.

"Tsukishima," the coach began, speaking for the first time since they'd arrived, "You're a smart kid; I don't think I need to tell you how improbable that is. I may not know too much about medicine, but I have enough common sense to know that you won't be full speed in just two months."

"I didn't say I'd be fully healed," Tsukishima responded, a calm determination ringing in his  
voice, "I said I'd be on the court."

"Tsukki," Yamaguchi joined in, clearly concerned for his best friend, "My uncle's a paramedic; he's seen stuff like this before. You'll probably be able to walk around by then, and maybe even function somewhat normally, but you won't be able to exert yourself in a game."

"Then I'll do what I can. I just need to be able to play long enough to read and time our opponents' spikes." Amaya spoke up from the back of the room, her presence having been completely forgotten by the team.

"If that's the case, baby," she said as she parted the waters, making her way to her son's bedside, "You need to take care of yourself. You need to get enough sleep, eat solid meals, and follow the doctor's orders to the letter. I know how hard this is going to be for you, but if you're going to have any chance of healing enough to play, you can't skimp out on anything. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Good. I love you very dearly, Kei. You're strong enough to overcome this." Tsukishima nodded, unsure of what to say. Before conversation with the team could resume, heads turned at the sound of the hospital room door slowly creaking open. As the crack between the door and its frame widened, Tsukishima saw the last person he expected to see step over the threshold: His father, Yoshirou. Yoshirou strode over to the foot of Tsukishima's bed, his back straight and his eyes focused, keeping every bit of his dignity about him.

"Kei."

Tsukishima looked up at his father.

"Dad."

"I believe I owe you an apology. I thought a lot about what I wanted to say to you, and I realize I said a few hurtful things earlier that I'm not proud of, so... I'm sorry." Tsukishima could see the pride in Yoshirou's eyes recede like the tide, watching remorse rapidly take its place. "I know you're just dealing with this situation the best way that you can, and I shouldn't have reacted the way I did. I've been so wrapped up in the fact that I lost my son, I nearly forgot that you also lost your brother. I let my own grief blind me from understanding yours."

Yoshirou sighed, pausing his speech briefly to gather his thoughts. In the weight of the silence, Yoshirou brought his hand to his eyes, hoping the pressure of his thumb and index finger would halt the wave of tears he knew was coming. As he watched his father take this very personal moment, Tsukishima heard a small sound akin to a whimper escape Yoshirou's lips and realized that he was crying.

"I love you, Kei," the businessman breathed, weeping in front of others without embarrassment for the first time in decades. He walked around the bed so that he was directly beside Tsukishima, pulling him into a hug.

"It doesn't matter what happens, I will always love you." Very quietly, Tsukishima began to cry as well, his breath coming out in harsh rasps. He didn't understand it. He was absolutely fine a minute ago. Now, he felt overwhelmed, swamped with all the grief he'd locked away after he received the news hours ago. He tried to shove it back down, swallow it like he'd done with all his other emotion, but found himself unable. His brother was dead. _His brother was... dead._

"Dad, I..." The words felt clumsy and awkward on his tongue, speaking with an emotional intensity he hadn't tasted in years, "I miss Akiteru... I wish this never happened." Yoshirou hugged his son tighter.

"I know. I miss him, too." Yoshirou pulled back, holding Tsukishima by the shoulders at arm's length. "Kei... You and I are a lot more alike than either of us would like to admit. But you need to understand, no matter how much we argue, you're my son, and I will never abandon you. This recovery process will be the slowest and most painful ordeal you will probably ever face, and I will be by your side through every minute of it."

Sugawara watched Tsukishima and his father silently as they shared what he figured was probably their first tender moment in years. Sugawara had never met Yoshirou personally, but Amaya and Akiteru were both kind, amicable people and he knew Tsukishima's foul attitude had to have come from somewhere. As humble as Yoshirou was at the moment, Sugawara could see from the way he dressed and his pride upon entering the room that he was usually a lot more stern and formal.

"Yeah! And not only do you have your parents behind you, you've got us, too!" Tanaka shouted with his hands balled into fists at his hip, striking a proud superhero pose. Nishinoya shouted in agreement, joining in as Daichi belly laughed along with them, patting Tanaka on the back as he did so. Asahi laughed sheepishly at Nishinoya as Ennoshita, Kinnoshita, and Narita all let loose a chorus of yes's. Hinata smiled broadly, rambling to Kageyama about how 'totally cool' their team was going to be now that they had a player who'd narrowly escaped death. As Tsukishima's moment with his father passed, he listened to his idiotic teammates with more interest than usual. Did they really mean it - everything they'd said? Tsukishima felt himself become overwhelmed by a new feeling, one he hadn't experienced since he was small.

Trust.

For the first time in several days, Sugawara found some semblance of inner peace. He almost couldn't remember the last time he felt this... calm. Tsukishima was going to live. He was going to play at Nationals. The team was together, whole once again. Sugawara looked down at his feet, letting himself become absorbed in the feeling. _There's only one thing amiss_ , he noticed, _Akiteru_. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that the pain of the gaping hole Akiteru's passing had left in their lives would linger for a long, long time. However, he was also sure that there was nothing he could do about it. Tsukishima and his parents, Yamaguchi - they would all have to handle Akiteru's death in their own way, at their own pace, and Sugawara knew that he couldn't let the bitter taste of the whole ordeal sour the peace he'd worked so hard to achieve.

Tsukishima was alive, and the team had reconciled.

For now, nothing else in the world mattered.


	26. Chapter 26

Tsukishima's rib cage hurt like hell.

The pain was excruciating, originating in the wound itself and radiating into his chest and abdomen - a sharp, crippling pain, pulsing in his side with each heartbeat. Every breath was a chore; his lungs burned with each intake of air, and his broken rib ached each time he tried to move. Whether he was sitting upright, shifting his weight in bed, or simply drawing in another breath, any time he tried to do anything on his own, Tsukishima's broken body was sure to protest.

_Well, it certainly could be worse_ , he mused sarcastically as his mother helped him get into a pair of suit pants, _I could be dead_. His use of the word ‘dead’ brought up all the grief from his older brother's overdose, and what he expected to be mild amusement at his morbidity instead turned into the sharp pangs of familial loss. He grimaced.

"Okay, let's try standing up," Amaya said as she knelt on the floor at his feet. She'd taken a few seconds to get the pants around his ankles. Tsukishima was already wearing his dress shirt, since a nurse had come in earlier to handle his IV line as Amaya guided his arms through the appropriate holes as painlessly as possible. His right sleeve had been neatly folded up to his elbow to avoid getting tangled with the IV, and his tie hung loose around his neck.

If Tsukishima was being honest with himself, he felt absolutely humiliated. A few days ago he was at his peak, jumping and blocking and reading his opponents. Now, less than a week later, he needed his mother's help just to dress himself. He felt helpless, which he guessed was accurate, although it didn't make him feel any better to admit it. His mother replied as if reading his mind.

"I know being like this is going to be tough for you, honey," She stood from her kneeling position on the floor and took his hands. "But you know that it doesn't matter to me how much help you need - I'm just glad I still have you with me."

Tsukishima could feel the deeper tones of sadness lying underneath the loving ring to her voice, like a soft vibration in the center of his chest, and he knew she was thinking of Akiteru. She had been what Tsukishima could only describe as overwhelming the last day and a half, and it frustrated him to no end. Overprotective to a fault, she pounced like a tiger whenever it was even insinuated that something could possibly harm him any further, showering him with concern that did more to annoy him than it did to actually help. What frustrated him even more was that he knew he couldn't be mad at her for it. He could tell by the look in her eyes when she brushed her fingers through his thick blond waves, every service she did for him reminded her of what more she could have lost. Seeing her work so hard to push through all the grief of Akiteru's death only to see her other son suffer made Tsukishima feel guilty.

Amaya sat down on the edge of the bed next to Tsukishima on his left side, looping her arm around his waist and letting him lean into her shoulder. She took the pants from the floor and pulled them up around his legs before handing him the waistband.

"Okay, here we go."

They stood on the count of three.

"One, two... three!"

As soon as Tsukishima threw his weight onto his feet, he felt the pain in his chest and abdomen surge as the strain tore at his stitches. He cried out before he could get his balance, and his knees buckled underneath him. Amaya caught him as he fell, holding him up as he struggled through his pain.

"Just breathe, baby," she cooed as she shouldered the bulk of her son's weight, "Just breathe."

Despite breathing - gasping - as his mother instructed him to, Tsukishima's pain wouldn't lessen. He felt like his lungs were on fire, every muscle in his core screaming for him to rest. Pretty soon he began to lose awareness, his head swimming as his surroundings started to vanish before his weary eyes. Consciousness fading quickly, he somehow managed to pull the pants over his hips just as his vision became spotted with black fuzz.

"Kei, are you with me?" Amaya asked with a note of marked concern as she gently lowered him back onto the bed. Tsukishima could feel himself slowly return to normal as he relaxed back into a semi-comfortable sitting position, his pain receding back into the ever-present ache that had plagued him before.

"...yeah..." His voice came out closer to a squeak than something recognizably human, like a mouse in a far away room. It was humiliating, and he hated it.

"Take it easy," his mother was saying beside him, "You're allowed to need help, honey."

Tsukishima didn't respond. He wanted today to be over. He didn't want to go to his brother's funeral. He didn't want all his relatives to pat him on the back and tell him how _sorry_ they were that his parents lost their child, and how _surprised_ they were to hear that he'd died, and how _pitiful_ Tsukishima looked sitting there next to his only brother's casket in a _fucking wheelchair_. They'd feel badly seeing Akiteru, but then they'd see him with his IV pole and his oxygen tank and ask him what happened. His mother would chime in, crying of course, and tell them that her only remaining little boy was shot. They'd respond with such heartfelt concern that even his father's stone cold exterior would melt like an ice cube on summer concrete, but it would all be fake. This funeral was going to be a fool's parade of self-righteous compassion and false sympathy. Let me heal in peace, he would tell them, shutting down their self-fulfilling conversation before it began.

And that wasn't even taking into consideration his teammates and classmates, who would undoubtedly show up and see him at his worst. His teammates he wasn't really worried about; they'd already seen him unconscious in the hospital - Hell, Sugawara saw him nearly bleed to death on the floor of a convenience store - but his classmates were a different story. He was the quiet kid, the smart one who was generally known for not giving a damn what the rest of the world thought of him. Maybe it was pretentious, but Tsukishima wanted it that way. He liked that his classmates saw him as this strange creature who mustn't be messed with; it was their fear of the unknown that kept them from annoying him, and it also served as the fodder that shored up his fragile pride. To let them see him at his lowest point was to let them know he was human - it was like giving them an invitation to peek into his closest self, and the mere thought of it made him furious.

Amaya watched the intense look on her son's face evolve as she continued to dress him, worried not only about his health, but about what he was thinking and feeling as well. She saw his expression, a confusing mix of anger and pain, grow in intensity until she felt it would completely take over his face like a demonic possession, and decided to say something about it.

"You're quiet this morning, Kei. What's on your mind?"

"I'm sitting in a hospital and you're dressing me for my brother's funeral," Tsukishima muttered, avoiding eye contact, "I wonder what could be on my mind." Amaya's face waned into a disappointed frown.

"Kei, that was uncalled for. I love you. I'm worried about you." Amaya's hand was halfway to her son's suit pants before Tuskishima's own hand stopped it firmly in its place.

"I can do it myself." He buttoned and zipped his fly, taking another shot at dodging a conversation about his emotions.

"Where's dad?"

"Your father's at the funeral home already. He left earlier; he wanted to make sure everything was ready."

"He can't just let them do their jobs?" Tsukishima scoffed as Amaya reached up to his neck and began securing his tie. Frustrated, Tsukishima wrenched it from her hands and tied it himself. Amaya sat back on the bed, seemingly defeated.

"Kei, that's not fair. You know how your father gets when he's emotional: He needs to control things. This isn't any easier on him than it is on you."

"My father can walk and breathe and dress himself. He isn't in pain every time he twitches a muscle. Is it supposed to hurt this much? Did they say why my morphine dose is so low?"

"It's your liver, honey," Amaya responded as she helped ease him back into a reclining position on the bed. She raised the headboard and propped a few pillows behind the small of her son's back as he lowered himself painfully onto the mattress. "Because it was damaged by the bullet, it can't filter your blood as efficiently, so they're afraid if they give you the normal dose the toxins in the medication will shut it down."

Kei turned away from his mother's gaze, focusing instead on the different tubes and wires wrapped around his body. Only the heart monitor, IV line, and oxygen tank were left. As he talked to his parents yesterday while the nurse readied him for his chest tube removal, he discovered that he had apparently also been on a ventilator immediately after his surgery. He imagined, for a moment, what it would have felt like to be awake while a plastic tube pumped oxygen down his windpipe and into his lungs, forcing him to breathe without any control - conscious or subconscious.

_It would feel like choking_ , he determined, internally cringing at the thought. Looking around at all the equipment around him, equipment meant only to keep him alive, he felt nothing but embarrassment. Everything around him - the heart monitor, the IV, the oxygen - was an external display of his current weaknesses. It was like having all of his shortcomings on full display, ready for anyone to waltz in and look upon them. He hated it.

"Kei," Amaya tried to return to the topic at hand, her eyebrows raised in concern. "I really am worried about you."

Tsukishima remained silent.

"You know, contrary to what you might believe, you are allowed to have feelings." The exhausted teenager snapped his head up in response, not expecting such a direct statement from the woman known more for gentle comfort than straightforward truths. She sat back down on the edge of her son's bed, running her hands through the familiar blond hair, and spoke in a soft voice.

"Honey, you were shot. You were injured very badly - to the point that you almost died. You're in constant pain, you can't play volleyball to de-stress, and to top it all off, you lost your only brother without being given a chance to make peace with him, or even say goodbye. That would put a substantial strain on anyone - especially a teenager. Everything you're feeling is valid."

Tsukishima met his mother's eyes and saw the honesty shining at their surface. He knew his mother was easier on him than he was on himself - it was natural. Mothers were supposed to think their little babies were the superstars of the world. It didn't matter what he'd done or didn't do, or what he deserved - Amaya Tsukishima would still believe that nothing was his fault, and that all his anger was okay. He bet even the shooter's mother told her son the same thing, despite the fact that he'd nearly murdered a high school teenager.

But how could he explain this anger to Amaya? His mother had always been good at handling emotions - it was a wonder neither he nor Akiteru inherited any of it. It had always been so simple for her to spill her guts, explain what was bothering her, so that talking it through would help take the edge off the pain. How could he explain to her that putting words to feelings - swallowing his pride - wasn't nearly as easy for him?

"Mom... I... I can't," he said, his voice barely more audible than a whisper, "I can't talk about it now. I just... I can't." Amaya sighed, understanding completely.

"Of course, baby, today's going to be tough. You need time to process. Let's finish getting you ready and meet your father at the funeral home." Kei nodded in silent agreement as Amaya continued to ready her son for his brother's funeral, all the while steadying herself for the emotional roller coaster that she was about to endure.

* * *

Yamaguchi counted his freckles as he brushed his teeth in his bathroom mirror before his childhood friend's funeral. It wasn't like he hadn't counted them before. He'd done it loads of times, especially when he was in middle school, because the other boys teased him about them, and he was self-conscious. Sometimes he did it to pass the time as he waited with his mom at the bank, staring at his reflection in his phone screen. Sometimes he did it out of habit as he brushed his unruly head of thick, brown hair. But today, he did it deliberately. He needed to keep his mind off everything that had gone wrong in the last few days. Tsukki's injury, Akiteru's death, and - maybe the most frightening of all - his own part in what was probably his best friend's darkest tragedy.

He'd been thinking about it ever since he first saw Tsukki awake in the hospital Saturday afternoon. His dad had just come in to apologize (a rare sight in and of itself), and the two shared a tender moment in honor of their loss. Yamaguchi couldn't stop staring at them thinking: _If only you knew... If only you knew that this was all my fault..._ The guilt was eating him alive.

He thought about Sugawara, too. He thought about how he'd spilled the beans in the children's waiting room the night of Tsukki's surgery, and how Sugawara was so sure that his friend would forgive him. But Yamaguchi wasn't so sure. As long as he'd known Tsukki, he'd never done anything this serious. Sure, the sarcastic blocker forgave him for that time he slept over at their house, got spooked by the furnace in the middle of the night, and accidentally knocked over and broke one of their family picture frames, but that was nothing compared to what he'd done this time.

He killed Tsukki's brother. It was all his fault. For something so serious, Yamaguchi wouldn't dare to ask forgiveness; even the mere question would be an insult.

But still... that didn't change the fact that Tsukki needed to know what happened. He needed to know that if Yamaguchi's cowardice hadn't gotten the best of him, Akiteru would be alive.

Yamaguchi took a tiny paper cup from a stack on the edge of the sink and filled it with water from the tap. He put the cup to his lips and, closing his eyes, took a small swig, swishing the water around his mouth as he considered what he would say. Tsukki was a straightforward and logical person, so he would simply say it like it is.

No embellishments.

No excuses.

Exactly what happened.

Then he would leave himself at the mercy of his best friend's grieving rage. Tsukki would release all the emotion he'd stored up inside himself and while the pain of losing his only close friend would be unbearable, at least Yamaguchi would no longer have to live with the guilt of Akiteru's death hanging on his conscience.

He spit the foaming mix of water, toothpaste, and saliva into the sink as his fear of the inevitable encounter overtook his mind. Yamaguchi looked up from the cream-colored bowl and stared, losing himself in the intensity of his own gaze as he felt his chest tighten and his stomach churn at the thought of the worst case scenario. Rarely had he heard Tsukki raise his voice in anger, and trying to imagine the teen directing that anger at him sent a wave of goosebumps cascading over his skin.

After several minutes of mental preparation he decided: This time, he would face his fears. This time he would be a man.

* * *

Tsukishima felt his first wave of embarrassment hit the instant his mother opened the door to the funeral home. It was ridiculous - the viewing hadn't even started yet - but he still felt the surge of heat flush his face. There would be people there, even if they weren't there right now, and they would see him at his weakest. He couldn't get the thought out of his head.

It was always puzzling how much funeral homes reminded Tsukishima of a senile old lady's mansion. As soon as Amaya pushed open the heavy oak front door and wheeled him inside, Tsukishima couldn't help but stare at how busy the wallpaper looked. It was a burnt orange color, covered with far too many ornate brown/gold fleur-de-lis. It was striped, too, with columns of those designs, each about the size of his fist, positioned within their own little lines. And if that wasn't enough, as the pair progressed through the building, Tsukishima noticed that each and every wall was adorned with large, framed paintings of serene forest lakes and bright sunlit skies - things that were supposed to make loved ones feel at peace.

_I suppose that makes sense_ , he thought morbidly as he fidgeted with a button on his sleeve, _it's the least they can do, considering you're paying them several thousand dollars to spend the day with your dead loved one and a bunch of crying family members._

Amaya pushed Tsukishima around the ground floor of the funeral home, giving the tired young man the opportunity to see all the lonely extra rooms in the process. He couldn't help but think they looked ornate to the point of being comical, filled with side tables, vases with large, wide-leaf plants, and stiff armchairs gathering dust that served no other purpose than to be gawked at as the line of grieving visitors shuffled through.

It wasn't long before the mother/son pair reached the main parlor, where Yoshirou sat in the front row of open chairs, waiting in silence with his son's open casket. At first glance, Tsukishima didn't even recognize the somber image of his father sitting before him - Yoshirou was downcast so little, that anything other than firm rigor was foreign to him. Amaya had hardly pushed Tsukishima's wheelchair through the archway before the heavy air hit their lungs, anchoring their breath to the bottom of their stomachs. Amaya's eyes softened at the sight, and she spoke in a gentle voice.

"Yoshirou."

The melody of the way she said his name was like a song that pulled him from the crushing darkness of a bad dream. He stood and turned to her, the expression on his face relaxing from a rigid pain into a soft ache. The handful of steps between them eroded away as he moved toward her, taking her into his embrace and burying his nose in her hair.

"Amaya." He released her, cupped her face in his hands, and gave her a small kiss on the forehead. "How was your morning?" Amaya's answer was half-hearted and her voice sounded strained.

"Fine. It was fine." Their conversation fell into a heavy silence. "How was yours?"

"Fine."

Tsukishima watched as his parents continued to emotionally tip-toe around each other for the next half hour. Speaking just enough to communicate their basic needs, but never discussing anything deeper, Amaya and Yoshirou spent the remaining time before the viewing on opposite ends of the funeral home. After several agonizing minutes, Amaya excused herself to go use the restroom, leaving Tsukishima with Yoshirou slowly pacing the parlor until she returned. The tension was more uncomfortable for Tsukishima than when the two grieving parents stood arguing in his hospital room. Seeing his father in such a state of disrepair was both embarrassing and pitiful in a way the teen could never hope to describe. True to his nature, however, Yoshirou stayed silent, not saying another word until Amaya returned, even as the viewing began, and friends and family started to turn up.

The Tsukishima family stood in a neat little line to the left of Akiteru's coffin, Yoshirou positioned first, followed by Amaya, and finally with Kei on the end, his wheelchair marking the end of Akiteru's close family like a caboose on the end of a train. He watched the front doors intently as he waited for his brother's close friends and family to wander through. Amaya's mother was the first to arrive, paying her respects to her fallen grandson before making a beeline for her daughter, enveloping her in a tight hug and immediately fawning over Tsukishima. Next, various aunts, uncles, and cousins arrived as well, in addition to both of Yoshirou's parents, who came in about fifteen minutes later.

Small crowds of Akiteru's college friends and colleagues from work came through every once in a while, expressing their sorrows to Tsukishima and his family before leaving to mingle with the other grieving attendees. A few of them stopped at the end of the line and did double takes as they passed Tsukishima. The most common question they asked was what happened. _I was shot in a convenience store robbery_ , he told them, over and over again, rapidly growing weary of speaking the same words multiple times in a row. The second most common question was when. _The same night my brother died_ , he answered. More overblown sympathy. The repetition of it all drove Tsukishima mad over the course of the next hour. _Stop caring about me!_ He wanted to shout, _I'm not important. This is my brother's day. It's the last day he will ever have! It belongs to him!_

It was in that moment that the rest of the Karasuno team arrived. The third years (plus Ennoshita, Kinnoshita, and Narita) were quiet and respectful, dressed neatly and appropriately for a funeral. Tanaka and Nishinoya had cleaned up surprisingly well considering the way they normally conducted themselves in public, and Kageyama just looked uncomfortable, endlessly fidgeting with his tie and the buttons on the sleeves of his suit jacket. Hinata stuck by his side, following the setter around like a toddler. Takeda and Coach Ukai stuck around each other as well, though Tsukishima had to admit, seeing his coach in something other than sweat pants and a t-shirt was an odd sight. He didn't even know Ukai owned a suit.

But what really shook Tsukishima was the sight of his best friend. Yamaguchi looked lost, hiding inside himself, shrinking away from the world around him. In fact, Tsukishima hadn't seen his best friend look that timid since the day they met, when he was surrounded by bullies and about to cry. Tsukishima would normally have chalked it up to grief, but the freckle-faced first year didn't simply look sad, he looked restless. He wasn't just in mourning, there was an air of anxiety about him that, try as he might, Tsukishima just couldn't help but notice. Unable to escape from his family at the present moment, he made a mental note to catch Yamaguchi alone later. Before he knew it, his volleyball team had made their way through the long line of mourners to meet him.

Ukai and Takeda met him first. They both bowed deeply to his parents, expressing their sorrow for Akiteru's passing shortly before moving on to address Tsukishima.

"How are you feeling?" the literature teacher asked, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. Tsukishima figured that as much as he was getting sick of that question, there were better uses for his limited energy supply than to waste it arguing with a teacher. However, that didn't mean he had to be entirely truthful.

"Fine," he lied, "It's better today." Takeda smiled, believing the teen's statement.

"I'm glad."

"We miss you on the court," Ukai chimed in with a smirk on his face, "Our defense isn't the same without you."

Little by little, the rest of the team started to filter through the line. Daichi, Asahi, and Sugawara met him first, each expressing their condolences and making sure he was alright. Sugawara took particular interest in Tsukishima's answers; he felt like some sort of experimental specimen, like the third year was studying him. Tanaka and Nishinoya followed, each doing his best to make Tsukishima smile despite the situation, with no avail. Hinata and Kageyama bumbled through next, followed by Ennoshita, Kinnoshita, and Narita, each one apologizing for the unbridled energy of their diminutive middle blocker and his trouble-making setter.

Yamaguchi held up the rear. As he came through the line, he only barely showed civility toward Tsukishima's parents, hardly speaking above a whisper and bowing weakly. Tsukishima tried to get his attention as he passed and the team left the line to go mingle, but for the most part he refused to make eye contact. It was only at the very last second that Yamaguchi glanced back, gazing at him with a look that oozed one thing: Guilt.

_There's definitely something wrong with Yamaguchi,_ Tsukishima confirmed within himself as he watched his team disperse around the room.

As the viewing wore on, Tsukishima became increasingly aware of the throbbing pain in his side, and he tried every mental technique he knew to will it away, but without result. Knowing that there was nothing he could do about it, he continued to put on a brave face for his friends and family. As he was doing so, Kuroo and Bokuto showed up, laughing and teasing him at first, but quickly showing genuine concern as the conversation went on. He talked a little with groups of Akiteru's college buddies as they continued to trickle in, quickly burying all the painful memories of his brother their stories dug up.

At one point, even Kiku made an appearance, taking care to personally express how relieved she was that Tsukishima was alive. He could see how awkward the conversation was for her - after all, it's not like they even really knew each other. They'd only exchanged a few passing words before a maniac burst into the store with a gun, but Tsukishima could read the distress all over her face. She really was worried that he'd died in surgery that night. Maybe she was afraid he hadn't even made it to the hospital, that he'd passed away bloodied and in pain en route in the ambulance. For the first time, he wondered what it must have been like on the outside, not only for Sugawara, but for this perfect stranger. Would he have had the courage to do what she did, call the shots that ultimately saved the life of someone he didn't even know? Probably not. In awe of what she'd done for him, Tsukishima thanked her.

It wasn't long until the large group settled down, the minister approached the podium, and the visiting family and friends took their seats in the chairs that had been arranged for them. Amaya and Yoshirou sat in the front row with Tsukishima's grandparents, specifically positioning themselves so that Amaya could sit in the aisle seat beside her younger son's wheelchair. As Tsukishima looked around, he noticed that his team had taken their seats directly behind them, with Kuroo, Bokuto, and various Nekoma and Fukurodani players sitting behind them. Kiku sat on the other side of the aisle near the middle, shuffling uncomfortably amidst a group of older ladies Tsukishima vaguely recognized to be relatives of his. After a few moments, the minister began to speak.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today not to mourn a death, but to celebrate a life: the life of our dear friend and brother, Akiteru Tsukishima. We have gathered to support his loving family as they enter these trying times, and through these tribulations we hold fast in our hearts one undeniable truth: That no life cut short is ever a life wasted. The kindness of one man touches so many others, and though he passed away young, Akiteru has made a positive impact on every life that crossed his own."

Tsukishima could feel his breath stop in the back of his throat as his chest tightened. He promised himself he wasn't going to cry. Once in the hospital was enough. He would not embarrass himself again.

"As much as Akiteru's life was a happy one, I'm not going to stand here today and tell you that you will not feel the pain of his passing. His absence has left a hole in the lives of all those who knew him. But as Jesus himself said, 'Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.' And so I tell you that it's okay to cry, for it is our emotions that make us human."

That seemed to flip the switch for most of the mourners, the catalyst that fueled their tears. Tsukishima could hear not only his parents, but also his team behind him, sniffling along with the minister's sermon. There were only two voices from his team he recognized were openly crying: One was Yamaguchi's, since he was the only one of the group who'd known his brother personally for several years, and the second one was Sugawara's, since he was the one present for Akiteru's death, and probably felt at least somewhat responsible. Tsukishima refused to turn around to look at them. He was afraid he might meet them eye to eye.

"At this time I would like to turn the stand over to Yoshirou Tsukishima, who will be delivering the eulogy."

Tsukishima watched as the minister stepped down from the podium just as his father stood from his chair. He took a few moments to clear his throat and adjust his tie before taking the handful of steps to the microphone. Once there he adjusted it as well, and took a slightly crumpled and folded sheet of paper from his inside suit pocket. He looked down at the page and began to read.

"For those of you who don't know," he began with a note of thinly concealed sadness, alternating between making eye contact with the audience and staring down at the words printed neatly on the page, "Akiteru was my son. And today... is the day I tell him goodbye."  
Yoshirou took in a sharp breath, one the microphone only barely picked up, one that indicated he was desperately holding back tears.

"I should begin by saying that I am not an emotional man. Growing up I very quickly learned that a bleeding heart would never get you very far in this life, only hard work and raw ambition would do that - I simply never had much care for it. So you can imagine my surprise the day my beautiful wife Amaya told me she was pregnant with our first child. Of course I loved my wife in my own way (I still do), but I spent those next several months wondering how I would love a child. If I can be honest for a moment, my biggest fear was that I would be unable to love a child the way children are meant to be loved. I was afraid there wasn't enough room in my heart." Yoshirou paused, turned to Amaya, and gave her a weak, but honest smile.

"Reality soon proved me wrong, as the day quickly arrived when she gave birth to Akiteru. I will never forget the first time I laid eyes on my eldest son. Upon Amaya's request, the nurse took him from my wife's arms and placed him in my own, and it was a flood of the most intense emotion I had ever felt. It was from that moment onward I knew that this tiny creature, this brand new human being I would call my son, deserved every last iota of love I had to give him. I had been given several titles in my time, especially in the world of business, but that day I added to my repertoire the one I'm most proud of - father."

"Akiteru was the most patient and gentle child I had ever known - even as an infant he rarely cried. Every day I spent watching him learn and grow was the most fulfilling day of my life. He made friends easily, he was always willing to give what he had to the other kids, especially those from families less fortunate than ours, and he loved even the smallest living thing. In fact, Amaya always had to distract him upstairs whenever we had the house exterminated, because he cried the first time he found out we were killing all the bugs in the house."

This little anecdote earned a slight chuckle from the audience. Yoshirou looked up at them, chuckled painfully, and continued.

"Despite all of this, there was no one he loved more than his little brother, Kei. At the time of the overdose that tragically claimed his life, Akiteru was twenty-two years old. He had both a part time job and a full load of college classes, but he still made time for Kei. Despite their rocky past, Akiteru never failed to take time out of his busy schedule to come to Kei's volleyball games, cheering him on all the way to Nationals. In fact, as different as my two sons were, volleyball was not only the one thing they could connect on, but it was probably also the first passion Akiteru ever had. He spent hours with Kei teaching him everything he knew, even when it meant giving up what little free time he had to do so."

This story drew a handful of wistful stares from Akiteru's volleyball team.

"As Akiteru grew from a child to a young adult, I almost couldn't believe my eyes - Where had the time gone? But it was well worth it, because I could tell even as early as his first day of high school, Akiteru would become a far greater man than I ever could be. I watched him as he discovered girls, the first time he had his heart broken, and as he began to think about who he would become. Words cannot describe how proud I was the day he left for college. All his bags were loaded in his car, and he stood there on our front step with his car keys in his hand and a wide grin across his face and I knew: I could finally call my little boy an adult. I looked him in the eyes and I said, 'Akiteru, your mother and I have taught you everything we can to survive in the adult world. We won't be there with you to help you make the important decisions anymore. I can only hope you've learned what you need. Akiteru... today you become a man.'"

Yoshirou paused again, closed his eyes, and covered his face with his hand for a few seconds before he continued.

"You see news stories about shootings and overdoses, but you never stop to think that someday it might be your son whose face winds up on Channel Four. Thursday night I learned that lesson; I took my blessings for granted and lost someone very precious to me. Akiteru's stay on this earth may have been brief, but it was not in vain, because I can look out into this room and know that the reason you're all here today is because my son's life somehow touched yours. So for that I would like to thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules to honor my son and my family's struggle."

At this moment, Yoshirou turned to the open coffin, his softened eyes gazing woefully at the body within it.

"So with that... It's time for this chapter of our lives to come to a close. Goodbye, Akiteru. You can never know how much I love you." When Yoshirou finished speaking, the aura of the room settled into a thick heartache. As Kei watched his father finish his speech, he could see every pair of eyes in the room focus on the aging businessman, picking him apart, examining his sorrow. Little did Kei know, there was one mourner who would stand out from the rest.

* * *

Neal Myers had been a businessman since the day he graduated college. It was just after he got home from his graduation ceremony that he received a call confirming that he'd gotten the job he'd so desperately craved, and he'd been working there ever since. Now, thirty-five years later, his board of directors had chosen him to succeed his previous boss as the CEO of the company. It was a position he'd worked hard for his entire adult life, and the fact that he had finally reached the point when he could enjoy the fruits of his labor was something he was proud of.

Yoshirou had come into his employ sixteen years ago after a spectacular interview and a resume chocked full of experience, and Neal never had a problem with him. Yoshirou was a steadfast, hardworking, and logical man, and he climbed through the corporate ranks quickly, making his way to the top the Japanese branch of the company.

That was why, when Yoshirou confirmed his attendance for the dinner, Neal was certain that he would pull through for them. There was never a doubt that Yoshirou understood the importance of the dinner, but surely he had to know that such a last minute cancellation would reflect extremely poorly on his record with the company. When Yoshirou explained that there had been a death in his family, Neal was almost too stunned to process what he'd said. When Yoshirou further clarified that the death had not been a distant relative like Neal had assumed, but his own son, Neal couldn't even begin to describe the guilt that flooded his senses. He knew that as soon as Yoshirou hung up on him, he needed to, at the very least, show up to the funeral to show the young man respect and to make his apologies to his valued employee.

That's why he'd hopped on the first flight to Japan he could find after the dinner and made his way to Yoshirou's hometown as quickly as he could. His Japanese was stiff, but he knew just enough to communicate with the handful of Japanese employees he met with on a semi-regular basis. As he bumbled through Torono, Neal was soon able to locate the funeral home listed in the obituary he'd dug up online. It had taken him a while (he'd taken a wrong turn at the high school twice), but he was lucky enough to show up just in time to hear Yoshirou's eulogy speech.

When Neal entered the room, he could feel a ghostly silence haunting the air, filling his lungs, practically choking him. Embarrassed, both for his tardiness and his reaction to Yoshirou's absence from the dinner, he quickly slipped into the back row of chairs without making eye contact with either Yoshirou's family, or any of the other mourners. From this vantage point, he listened eagerly to all that his employee had to say.

* * *

Yoshirou didn't wait long to leave after the eulogy. Once he finished speaking, and the minister crossed the front of the room to take his place, announcing that it was now time for the procession to the cemetery, Yoshirou brushed Amaya's shoulder as a signal, and the couple left the room with Kei in tow.

Yoshirou didn't stop moving until the three of them were safely in an unused room in a remote corner of the funeral home. Yoshirou gestured in front of him with his hand, allowing his wife and son in front of him. Once inside, Yoshirou closed the door. Very slowly, Amaya watched her husband's facade crumble in front of her as his expression melted, his stern, business-like demeanor disintegrating into shambles. He could hardly keep himself on his feet as he stumbled, his knees weak, hands shaking, as he reached for the comforting touch of his loving wife. Amaya caught him just as it seemed like he would collapse and guided him to a plush-looking couch in the corner.

"It's okay..." Amaya muttered, gently pressing her husband's face into her chest as he shook, "I love you... It's okay..."

In that moment Yoshirou broke. He wept loudly, twisting Amaya's blouse in his white-knuckled fists as his tears gushed down the sides of his face, dripping from his chin like a faucet. Kei watched his father fall to pieces in his mother's arms as it sunk in that Akiteru Tsukishima would never come back.

It wasn't long before the door clicked. They snapped to attention when they saw Neal peek his head through the crack in the open door, his gaze shifting around to all three of them. He slowly stepped through it and entered the room, straightening his tie and averting his eyes in a move of awkward nervousness. He cleared his throat.

"Ahmm... Tsukishima?" A startled look flashed over Yoshirou's face a split second before he dug a handkerchief out of his suit pocket and swiftly cleaned his face, standing from the couch and turning to his boss a few seconds later. The two crossed the room to meet each other, and Neal reached out to shake his hand. Yoshirou took it with false confidence.

"Mr. Myers," he stuttered, "What a... surprise. I thought you were in New York." Neal purposefully met Yoshirou's eye, doing his best to convey the air of an important businessman and not reveal how supremely silly he felt for his actions days prior.

"I was. Once you told me about your son I felt it was appropriate to fly over to express my condolences."

Yoshirou wanted to thank him for his concern, but the words got stuck in his throat. Who was he, the head of the company, to fly across the world just to go to his son's funeral? Upon thinking about it, Yoshirou supposed he was still upset about the way Neal acted when he first told his boss about the unexpected tragedy. Important matters aside, to react to the loss of an employee's child with such a casual indifference was hardly professional, and if Yoshirou was being honest, it damaged his view of Neal both as a person and as his superior.

"Look, Tsukishima," Neal began, interrupting Yoshirou's thoughts, "I realize the way I acted a few days ago was... less than professional. I made split-second assumptions about you and your family that I should never have made, and as someone who's never even been married, much less had kids, I could never imagine the pain of losing a child to something like this, so... you have my sincerest apologies. I trust this incident doesn't damage our working relationship." The pain on Yoshirou's face receded, just a little.

"Absolutely, sir." he said, "I appreciate your taking the time to do this. It means a lot." Neal nodded.

"Of course." He turned his attention to Kei, "And who's this strapping young man?" Kei tried hard to suppress a slight scowl.

"This is my younger son, Kei," Yoshirou introduced, placing a hand on the back of Kei's wheelchair in the process. Neal flashed the teen a smile. He took note of the fact that the boy was in a wheelchair, complete with IV pump and oxygen, and remembered overhearing a few of the other mourners mumbling to themselves about what had happened. It had apparently been all over the news - the night the Tsukishimas lost their older son, their younger one got trapped in a convenience store robbery. The young man was apparently only mere days out of life-saving surgery for a gunshot wound. He couldn't imagine the kid was any older than a teenager. In a way, it both saddened him and made him uncomfortable. Until the eulogy, Neal hadn't even known Tsukishima had another son.

"Well, how do you do, Kei?" He reached out and shook his hand, "Neal Myers. I'm your dad's boss."

"Hello." Kei responded, quiet, yet polite. Neal turned back to Yoshirou, clapping him on the back.

"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree - he's the spitting image of you, Tsukishima." Yoshirou managed to awkwardly thank him.

"Anyway, the minister is looking for you. They're ready to process to the cemetery."

"Thank-you, sir, we'll be along in a minute or two." Neal nodded and left the room.

* * *

"Tsukki."

Tsukishima and Amaya, halfway out the funeral home front door, stopped in their tracks as Kei turned his head to the voice of his best friend behind him. Amaya gave her son a concerned look, but Tsukishima waved her off.

"They need us outside, Kei."

"Just give me a few minutes." Amaya sighed gently, positioned her son's wheelchair so that he was facing Yamaguchi, and joined her husband outside.

"What do you want, Yamaguchi?"

Yamaguchi stood about five feet away from his best friend, afraid to get any closer - it was instinctual. _He'll yell at me. He'll never speak to me again. I really screwed up..._ The guilt and fear tore through his core, shaking him down to the center of his being. If he had a falling out with Tsukishima, the team's balance and cohesiveness would shatter; he'd already seen it with Hinata and Kageyama's fight over the course of the summer. It wasn't until they'd made up and their quick started to work that the team began to fall back into place. But this wasn't just a fight over volleyball - this was somebody's life. He kept repeating it to himself like a mantra: _If I had just told someone... voiced my concern... Akiteru would be alive. It was my cowardice that killed my best friend's brother._ Like he'd told himself all morning, he just had to say it, get it out in the open air and let the chips fall where they may.

"I... I have a confession."

Tsukishima's expression took on a look of confusion at Yamaguchi's words. A confession? What kind of confession could he possibly have to make? What could have been so important that he felt the need to interrupt Akiteru's funeral?

"Yamaguchi... What are you talking about?" Yamaguchi clenched his fists as tears started to stream down his face. He didn't want this. He didn't want any of this.

"I... I'm so sorry, Tsukki... but...this is all my fault..." Tsukshima cocked his head to the side.

"What's all your fault?" Yamaguchi sniffled as he cried harder, almost unable to speak.

"Akiteru... T-Tsukki, I... I knew! I knew Akiteru was in trouble." He then proceeded to tell Tsukishima the same story he told Sugawara in the waiting room the night of the shooting. 

Tsukishima stared at Yamaguchi as he finished, letting the emotions filter through his expression one by one - the anger, the betrayal, the grief. At first, he was incredulous. How could his closest friend do something like this to him? As much as he knew and admired the strength of Yamaguchi's core, he knew that on the surface, the pinch server had a habit of shrinking away from unsure situations. At first, he was angry. If Yamaguchi had just told someone... maybe they wouldn't have to be here, in this situation.

But on the other hand, he knew that Yamaguchi never had any siblings himself, and that as a result, he looked up to Akiteru as a surrogate older brother. Tsukishima knew that he wanted to trust Akiteru. When his brother told him everything would be fine, there was a long-suppressed part of Yamaguchi's childhood that longed for the familial trust he never had. The same childhood instinct that caused me to trust Akiteru the first time, Tsukishima found himself thinking. In a way, he sympathized with Yamaguchi. Akiteru had duped him, too.

"I'm so sorry, Tsukki. I... I wanted to help, but I was afraid. I... I wanted to trust him."

"Yamaguchi, my brother would have continued taking the pills whether you had stumbled across him or not. You remember how he betrayed my trust when we were little. I'm just disappointed he didn't learn from the last time."

"B-but, Tsukki -"

"This isn't your fault, it's his. Taking the pills was his stupid decision. I'm not mad at you. Come on. We need to join my parents outside."

Smiling, Yamaguchi thanked Tsukishima, took the handles of his wheelchair, and pushed him outside to join his family, friends, and the other mourners for the final segment of the funeral.

* * *

The wind had picked up by the time the Tsukishima family had reached the cemetery. As Kei felt the huge gusts of wind assault his face, it took him back to the night of the shooting, feeling the wind and the moisture in the air, the heavy promise of rain as he and Sugawara walked to the convenience store and the singular event that would change his life forever. He tensed up and waited for the pain of the memory, and the physical pain that it brought, to pass.

The minister read a couple Bible verses praising the humble virtues of suffering and offering comfort to those in pain as the pallbearers, Yoshirou included, brought Akiteru's coffin from the hearse to the front of the crowd. As they came to a halt by the tombstone, the minister finished speaking, signaling a small choir to sing a soft ballad, one that Amaya had hand chosen the morning before. Their angelic voices continued to ring out into the rainy sky as the coffin was slowly lowered into the grave. The ornate mahogany casket came to rest at the bottom of the grave just as the choir's hymn came to a close, dissolving the moment with a sense of finality. The minister let the silence hang in the air for a pregnant pause before speaking once again.

"It is at this time I would like to invite Akiteru's immediate family to come forward and scatter the first handfuls of earth into the grave. By initiating the covering of the coffin with earth, the Tsukishima family also initiates their healing process, acknowledging that, as the Bible says, we are dust, and to dust we shall return."

The first to toss earth into the grave was Yoshirou. He approached slowly - stiffly - reached into the pile that had been scooped out to dig the hole, and opened his hand over the casket, letting the dirt simply fall into the grave. He refused to make eye contact with anyone, keeping his gaze intently focused on the dirt in his hand and the body of his son encased in front of him.

Amaya pushed Kei over to the grave next. Weeping bitterly, she reached over into the pile of earth and took a handful into her shaking fist. Tears flooding her face, Amaya's agonizing cries could be heard throughout the crowd of mourners. Painfully, she, too let the dirt fall into the grave.

Lastly, with a small bit of assistance from his mother, Kei leaned over and took a handful of earth from the pile himself. He found himself staring down into the grave, but not really seeing it, the heartbreaking image burning at the edges of his vision. His mind was elsewhere - in the yard with his brother bumping a volleyball back and forth with their receives, in his brother's room playing video games as Akiteru frantically reached over to smack Kei's controller, throwing him off enough to win the kart race - but not here. Not at a cemetery, in front of a concrete slab, staring down the maw of an open tomb. It suddenly dawned on him that those memories of his and Akiteru's childhood... those were the only memories he would ever have. This moment... of him here with his brother's resting place... this was the final scene - the final chapter in their story together. It was here that he realized that he'd spent so much time being angry, hateful, that he hadn't given himself time to simply say goodbye. As he turned the dirt over in his clenched fist, he thought back to earlier that morning with his mother, how she'd asked him what was wrong. He didn't have an answer for her then, but he had one now.

"I love him."

Amaya turned to look at her son. Kei refused to look back.

"In answer to your question earlier. I'm hurting... because I love him." Amaya, her cheeks still tear-stained and her eyes still bloodshot, gave him a tiny smile.

"Of course you do, Kei. He's your brother; you always loved him. That has never changed."

Holding that realization tightly in his heart, he found the strength to say goodbye, even if it was silently, in the privacy of his own mind.

Reaching over the grave, Kei Tsukishima opened his hand.

_Finis_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was sorta halfway between an epilogue and a final chapter. It's not as short as most epilogues, but I wanted to write the funeral anyway, even though it takes place after the timeline of the rest of the story. 
> 
> Anyway, thank-you so much to everyone who bothered to read this far! Haikyuu has held a special place in my heart since I first watched it, and I'm so glad I got to share that with everyone else here. 
> 
> I've also decided that I want this to have a sequel. I don't feel like this story has said everything that it needs to say yet, so I have some plans in the works for another installment. It might be a little while before I actually put up a chapter, since I'm still in the planning stages, but I hope you'll keep an eye out for it regardless ^-^
> 
> Lastly, I'm always looking to be a better writer, so if you have any constructive criticism for me, I'm all ears. I read every comment I get, so for those who are so inclined, I would love any feedback you all feel is necessary. 
> 
> Okay, I'm rambling again. Thank-you all again for being so amazing!


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